Country View Crafts - Bugs, Bees and Butterflies

 

It is a pleasure to be joining the Country View Crafts Challenge and Projects Design team today. Two fabulous blogs and a great online shop (where I spend far too much money!). I am sure you all know them well but here are the links just in case:

Country View Challenges

Country View Crafts Project Blog

Country View Crafts Shop

The first of the month means a new challenge and it is Bugs, Bees and Butterflies. The winner will receive a £20 shop voucher from our fabulous sponsor, Country View Crafts. The Top 3 entries and our Special mention award ( the most original and creative representation of the theme)  all receive blog badges and a chance to feature as guest designers.

So onto my project. I was recently at my first weekend craft retreat and attended a short class (run by Lorraine Bilsby) where we were creating this reversed canvassed. The original class project was based on Tim Holtz September tag - however I did change mine quite a bit !

Having applied gesso over all the areas of the canvass that were on show I started on the base section. I squirted some alcohol ink onto my craft mat and swooshed my glossy card through it to get a subtle uneven covering. Any gaps were filled in randomly used a felt applicator. The card was cut to slightly bigger than the aperture. I then stamped various stamps in archival ink. Once dry this was carefully bent to fit inside the canvass aperture.

The frame of the canvass (once dry) was covered in some text paper, carefully cutting the corners to fit. I inked with gathered twigs distress ink and stamped the side edges with a crack stamp (sorry no photo).

The sentiment was cut from one of Tim's dies in mirri card and alcohol ink added (sorry not an expert on alcohol inks colours - an orange and a blue). I love this effect on mirri card. Brads were added and smashed a bit to age them. I edged with black archival.

In the class we then set about making rainbow butterflies with alcohol inks as Tim did with his tag. Having done these I really didnt like them so decided to take more mirri card and use the same technique as the label. I stamped various sizes of butterfly, cut them out and edged with black archival.

They are mounted at different heights using coiled wire.

I still felt something was lacking on my canvass so cut some swirls later from grey board and applied some distress paints randomly including antiqued bronze to continue the metallic feel.

Quite a long post for me - thank you for getting this far! I will be back on Monday with my second project for Country View - but the next one is a little simpler!

Nikki

xxx