Friday 7 August 2009

Mini Memories

I belong to a small group DCI comprised mostly of Australians, but there are few of us from North America. The current swap is to make Mini items that can all be placed into a larger frame. Each participant has chosen a theme and a colour scheme. Some have stipulated a certain size and others have just left it up to the artist.

For the month of August Trizzy is the chosen recipient to receive a creation from 10 other people. Her theme is "Wings" and the colours blue and/or green with silver, with no specific size.

I recently bought a couple of stretched canvases at the dollar store and decided to use one for this project, but using the back instead of the front.

I covered the whole piece in gesso, then painted the inside with 3 different tones of blue acrylic paint. Still thought it needed "something" so went over it with blue H2O's - still not happy. So I took some silver fabric glue paint and slapped over the top portion and ran an old comb through it and rather like the effect as it looks like rain or a waterfall.

With my Cuttlebug I embossed some plumbers tape using the bird embossing folder (keeping the wings theme) and cut it to fit around the outside of the frame. I coloured the embossed parts with Adirondack pens then sprayed it with a setting agent.

I painted the inside edge in green but it did not seem finished so I tried several different things...stamping, lace, beads and even some green cording, however, none of them appealed to me. Into my stash!! I found some sea glass but it was too bulky; then I discovered some little plastic mosaic pieces and there were enough blue and green ones to fit around the edge. I adhered these with some of the wonderful Sookwang tape (Picture and giveaway on this blog) then used silver seed beads as the grout.

I stamped and coloured a cattails stamp by Hero Arts with Prismacolor pencils and and H2O's, and cut it out. I did not like it with the brown cattail head so cut them off and attached the rest of the image to the inside background. I had some little icicle embellishments in my stash and added them as more fauna. I added a jewell to a round paper clip and attached it to simulate the sun.

I have had the dragonfly ornament thing for years and this was the perfect opportunity to use it. I added some bead chain to the body and some beads on the tail, then attached a butterfly charm. I glued this to the frame with some super glue. However it would not stick. So I revised the piece. This was the original.
I took off the bird and replaced it with the butterfly. I cut off a piece of the dragonfly's tail and screwed it to the frame, then added a green jewell to hide the screw head. Much happier with it now and will mailing to Trizzy this week!!

4 comments:

Carol said...

Gorgeous! Trizzy is so fortunate!

Chris in Oz said...

OMG, Rena, you're little treasure is beautiful. Trizzy is going to love it. Better get a move on with mine you OS girls are putting us Aussies to shame. Thanks again for playing.

Hugz......

Brenda said...

You have certainly been busy and very productive. Love what you have created. Tried to go to the link for DCI but it didn't work :-(

Trizzy said...

Rena - this is just so gorgeous! I am so proud to own this in my collection - thank you again so much, hugs to you my friend...Trizzy