Jodie's back with her Family Canvas

Hi all. It’s Jodie here and I am back as promised with a canvas reveal this time. Now I did pre-warn you that it may be a little long, so if you haven’t already done so you may want to grab yourself a cuppa before you get too into it. There is plenty of Memory Maze chippies used on this one, and I used a few techniques that I haven’t tried with chippies before, but am really impressed with the way they turned out. So let’s get into it.

To begin with I started by selecting a picture that I thought would go nicely with the frame chipboard that I had (I actually had 2 that I couldn’t decide between as you will see in the following pictures). Then I searched through my Memory Maze chippies stash to find others that might work with these. After a few minutes of playing around with the layout I had one that I was quite happy with.

 

Then it was onto preparing the canvas. This would be the background of the piece so I wanted it to have some texture to it, but also match in with the theme of the piece. I initially stamped a floral image several times on the canvas and then out came my leaf stencil and modelling paste. While the modelling paste was still wet I grabbed another smaller leaf embossing plate that I had, and pressed this in to a few areas of the paste. This gave it just a bit more texture as you can see in the following pictures.

This was then allowed to dry (with some assistance from my heat gun), and a coat of gesso applied over the top. I only had a little gesso left in my container so decided to add a few drops of ink to it, to give the background a bit of base colour. This was then heated again to speed up the drying time.

Then came the fun (but messy if you are anything like me) part, colouring time. I spritzed the canvas with a little water and then added drops of inks in random places over it, followed by more water and inks, a little heat and then more of the same until I had something that I was reasonably happy with.

I then decided to add a little more ink to the background, but this time I added it to a baby wipe first and then sponged this over the canvas randomly. It gave the ink colours a completely different look, and gave the base colours that bit extra it needed. Once this was all dried a coat of matt medium was brushed over the top to help seal it all.

Then it was time to move on to the other elements for the canvas. There was the main frame chippie, the Family sentiment, the butterfly halves, and the other word sentiments and small ornate frames that all needed preparation before being able to stick to the canvas backing. The word sentiments, ornate frames, butterfly halves and large frame were all given a coat of gesso and then covered in acrylic paint.

I then concentrated on the butterfly halves, by giving them a coat of crackle accents. These were left to sit and dry while I worked on some of the other elements and after a little while you could see the little crack marks appear. This was when drops of alcohol inks were placed over the top of the crackle accents and left to soak in. Check out the effect in the pictures.

They needed a little bit of lightening, so I did the same again with some liquid acrylic ink, only this time it was only left for a minute or so and then the excess sponged off.

The smile and laugh word sentiments and the ornate frames (that had already been painted in black), were prepared in the same manner with the crackle accents and alcohol ink droplets soaking in. Here are a few close ups so you can see the effect of using this process on these pieces.

With the Family word sentiment I wanted it to be a bit lighter than the others, so before it was covered in crackle accents I sponged some white acrylic paint over it lightly. Then instead of adding the alcohol ink drops directly to the chippie piece, I applied them to my craft mat (which already had a spritz or 2 of water on it to help the inks react). I then turned the chippie over and left it to soak up some of the liquid colour (crackle accents side down in the ink). Be careful when lifting this as it will be very wet and fragile. I then heated it to help it dry a little (both front and back). As you can see from the close up below the difference in colours is a lot more subtle than the direct ink approach. I then covered the piece in the green liquid acrylic ink and wiped it off after a minute so that it seeped into some of the cracks.

Then it was onto the main frame. I thought that this needed a bit more texture to it so decided to clear emboss a leaf stamp randomly onto the top of it before I added any more colour. The glossy sections are where the leaves have been heat embossed.

Ink drops were then placed on a sponge and these were sponged over the frame to give it some additional colour.

Now it was time to start assembling all of the pieces. I decided to change up the original layout idea slightly as you can see from the pictures. I chose the main picture that I was to go with and this was cut down and glued to the back of the main frame. I also printed out some of the photos details on a spare piece of photo paper and cut these out and glued to the back of the ornate frames. I covered the front of the details sections with glossy accents. These were then glued in place on the main frame as were the butterfly halves. The sentiments were glued down to the canvas and the main frame was glued to several sheets of cardboard before being adhered to the canvas (to give it some added depth).

There you have it. Sorry about the length of the post, but there were quite a few steps involved in this one. Enjoy the rest of your day and another team member will be back in a few days, with more Memory Maze goodness to share.

Until next time,

Happy Crafting.

Jodie.