And a happy crafty day was had by all.....

Happy Monday everyone, hope you will have a good start to your new week! Lovely to have you drop by here.

Well as some of you know, on Saturday my two lovely crafty friends, Annie and Rita came to visit and we had so much fun!! We altered two canvasses, well one canvas and one piece of mount board to be precise.

We used acrylic paints, stencils, paper serviettes and stamping and finished our first pieces with a little photo image to be the vocal point and finish it all off. We had so much fun, - there was a lot of chatting, laughter as well as moments of silent concentration, and the best bit was that even though we all used exactly the same products and techniques, each piece turned out totally differently, reflecting our own personal styles.
 For Rita and Annie most of these techniques were new, so for those of you who are also not so familiar with mixed media techniques, and because several have asked for it in the past, I'll talk you through a quick step by step. (I can only show you detailed photos of the finished project though, because of course we were way too busy to take step by step photos.
So here goes:
1. Select some stencils and smear on some texture paste. Annie had brought two of the new Tim Holtz ones, so of course I chose one of those. Dry with a heat gun, (the pastes we used, Liquitex Ceramic Stucco and Golden Moulding Paste don't really puff up when you heat them with a heat gun, so are ideal when you want things to dry fast)
2. Select about 3 colours of acrylic paint (we used a mixture of Tim Holtz Distress Paints and Golden Fluid Acrylics) and blend them over the canvas, keeping it quite light at this stage.
3. Select a couple of paper serviettes, (Rita had brought a fab collection, lucky us) just the thin top layer, tear out the bits you want to use and adhere them to the canvas with Gel medium,, put the medium both underneath and over the top of the scraps of the serviette, smooth it all out a bit and dry it again.
3. Return to your chosen paint colours and carefully blend them around and partly over the serviette bits, that way they will melt into the background. A baby wipe can be very useful at this stage, or a bit of scrunched up kitchen roll, which can also add a bit more texture still.
4. The finishing touches: Some background stamping, best done with Archival or other none water based inks, a vocal image, either stamped, or as in this case a digital image and if you want a sentiment of some kind, add some Treasure Gold or other gilding wax over the raised textured bits, and your canvas is done.

We did the second piece in a slightly different way, but that will come in another post (I still need to finish mine, way too much chatting going on)
Here are some detailed photos:

Some tiny scraps of serviettes, they easily blend in even over the raised texture.

Treasure Gold carefully rubbed over the raised bits.

Careful painting around the images almost blends them completely into the background, but in this close up you can just see the edge a little bit.

Some blending around the edges of the vocal image with a charcoal pencil, to add a bit of shadow and depth

And here we are, after a long and happy day of crafting.

Don't know why I am pulling such a silly face, probably trying to stop myself from too much giggling....
I am sure both Annie and Rita will be showing their canvasses on their blogs, in fact they may have beaten me to it already, so if you haven't seen them yet, make sure to check them out!!

Thank you for visiting and have a wonderful week!