Hello lovelies! What a whirlwind May was! Whew. Thankfully the warm weather is finally here and I can sit outside and enjoy hearing the sounds of Spring although I don't care for getting stung by wasps. Seems like those critters set up a nice hive in my outdoor umbrella and my dog and I were both stung. Ouch! We are better now and got rid of the hive so everything is good but this helped inspire my design and the theme for this month at Anything But Cute!
I am the hostess this month at
Anything But Cute and the theme is: The Birds and the Bees! With the lovely warm weather in my neck of the woods, I am seeing so many wonderful birds and bee's, so I would love to see those in your mixed media makes! Pull out those bird stamps, think of feathers and maybe some honeycomb. Or you could even go for a non-traditional interpretation like a family crest that has a bird emblem on it. The sky is the limit but
NO BUTTERFLIES please!
I started with an old red book (I bought a bag of books for $1) and lathered some modeling paste to it, then waited for it to mostly dry then I grabbed a stencil and used a brayer to push the stencil design into the modeling paste. It worked for the most part. I painted it with DecoArt paint then added a layer of crackle glaze. Once the glaze was dry Raw Umber antiquing cream was added then wiped with a damp baby wipe.
Then I traced out my shield pattern onto some thick matboard and played with some chippies until I like the layout. The picture below is what everything looked like before I went to town with the mixed media part. Hehe!
All of the chippies were painted with white acrylic paint then a layer of DecoArt crackle paint and when that was dry and the cracks showed it was time to apply a layer of Raw Umber antiquing cream and wipe it with a baby wipe. The shield was painted with Tansparent Red Oxide, a layer of crackle glaze and then Raw Umber.
While the book was drying I worked on the spine piece. I used paper leather and ran it through an embossing folder then used multiple Distress Inks to age it.
It took me a loooooong time to find an eagle I liked and so this metal pendant was antiqued with alcohol inks, crackle glaze and antiquing cream. The metal axe looking swords behind the bird were fringed up with alcohol inks and dirt.
I applied the chippies with Tombow glue and added bronze brads to the shield and built up the bird nest then glued the bird and the axe things with glossy accents.
The picture above shows the dirty bird with some rusty goodness but I had to change the design because it didn't feel "done" to me. You all know how that goes. So I used the white alcohol inks and paints and was finally satisfied. :)
Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome sauce day! Feel free to see what my lovely teamies have designed as well. Hugz and Carpe Diem! ~Niki
I would like to share this family crest book design with these lovely challenges:
Anyone that works with red paint knows how messy it gets! My red acrylic paint bottle exploded to top everything off. Hehe! Oops.
