Guest Designing at Mixed Media World....

Hello everyone! I am happy to be able to share a project with you that I created for the wonderful Mixed Media World challenge blog. I was super excited when the lovely Ingrid Kristina, the owner of the blog, invited me to be guest designer there, so here goes:
I just love the current theme of using something made from wood as a substrate and decided to alter a little triptych/photo frame that I have had in my stash for ages.

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I am going to use it to display various pieces of art, changing them regularly to reflect the season we are in. My current piece hopefully gives the feeling of the last of late summer. I could have made a more Autumnal piece, but just received some new stamps from Inkylicious and really wanted to have a play with those…The frame started looking like this:

I gave it a coat of gesso and when that had dried added a mix of crackle and normal texture paste with the help of a palette knife. 

I used a variety of brown and buff coloured  Decoart Media line paints, Burnt Umber, Titan Buff etc until I was happy with the results. I wanted a fairly neutral, tree bark sort of look. I also added some Ground Espresso Distress Spray  to add more depth to the colour and to seep into the cracks. I then highlighted the raised bits with Decoart Metallic Lustre in the colour Champagne.

Below is a close up, so you can see the effect a bit better.

At this point I decided I wanted to embellish te frame with some rusty bits, so cut two dies with a Spellbinders die, this one is called Ironworks Accents.

I cut them from Kraft card and then rusted them with the help of some rusting powder and vinegar added some colour with some more Decoart paint and adhered them to the side panels.

Next I started to work on the card I wanted to fit in the middle. I took a piece of card I had created with the help of a gelli print. I have had this for ages, and I am sorry I don't quite remember what colours I used for the original print, but I do know a memory box stencil and an Andy Skinner background stamp were involved.

I cut a bit to fit the size of the aperture in my frame and stamped one of the stamps I wanted to use in black archival ink.

The sunflower was another stamp, I stamped it three times, fussy cut different parts and layered them one on top of the other to add depth and then added some micro beads to the centre using gel medium. I coloured it with Distress markers.

I stamped the first stamp again too and fussy cut and coloured just some of the leaves and adhered them over the original stamping to add more depth and colour.

And here you can see the finished card. Both stamps are from Inkylicious.

Here finally is the whole finished frame. It came with a clear acrylic front, held in place with some little clips in the back, so that it is easy to exchange what you want to display.

Well, that's it, thanks for visiting like always, and thank you so much Ingrid for inviting me in the first place. Happy creative weekend to you all!