House Art Canvas

Remember this (right)?  I did this background in May when I was taking Christi Tomlinson's Behind the Art class.  Other projects took priority so I never finished it until this weekend.  I rewatched Christi's video on adding a house and flowers to finish it up.

The design sticks fairly close to her example. I positioned my house a bit high on the canvas so I added the walkway by painting in a backdrop and then using modeling paste and some Close to Cocoa ink over a circle stencil for the paving stones.

I wasn't sure about the flowers as they are out of proportion to the house, but they are one of my favorite parts.  I also used Christ's rub ons that I'd bought from 2P's.  For shading, I'm using oil pastels as they are very inexpensive.  The drawback is that they can smear so you have to be very careful if adding another coat of Modge Podge over the top. If I dabbed it on with a sponge brush, it seemed to be fine. She uses Faber Castell markers in the video and I'm not quite ready for the investment.

I was pleased with the end result particularly as it is one of my first pieces.  I made the background a bit busier than the example in an effort to try all kinds of things at once.  Patience is not my strong suit.  Although the idea is to have a lot of visual dimension with transparent paint, tissue paper, stamps and rub ons.

Also I learned some things that I really like the effect of (stamping in black) and things I don't (rub-ons in white at the end of a project).

I particularly like how you can use all kinds of things that might be gathering dust otherwise like old clothing pattern pieces, rub ons (I used some old Stampin' Up! ones as well), and acrylic paint.

For more info on Christi's class, check it out here.  "Behind the Art" is very comprehensive.

I'll have a new video up for you tomorrowTuesday and a special surprise coming later in the week...