Special Week - Memories of Summer

 

As we enter Autumn I thought that there was one last opportunity to celebrate the summer. For me the summer is about having fun and family trips to the seaside and so I had a hunt of the 14 Craft Bar store and found a treasure trove of materials just perfect for making a reverse canvas assemblage piece. I hope you like it and decide to have a go at making something like this for yourself.

The starting point for this piece was a 16" x 10" canvas and two MDF pieces - the ship and rudder along side some of the wonderfully textural paints by Fabrika Decoru blue mold, green mold, icelandic moss, copper oxide, pistachio and white sand. 

I created my background by adding the paints in patches, layering them on top of each other to create colour variation that moved from Blue mold at the top to the pistachio colour at the bottom. The white sand was used to lighten areas of the "sea".

Having created my background I tucked the rudder and the ship into place and started to layer pieces from the Little Birdie Summer Sea die cut pack on to my piece.

Before adhering the die cuts into place I felt that the ship's colour needed softening and added a layer of white sand paint using a dry brushing technique making the sails look more realistic as I did so. I also added some of the white sand paint to the virtual sea bottom.

My next step was to select a collection of sea themed chipboard pieces, adding both detail and another textural element in the process. The pieces I chose where Fabrika Decoru sea animals, sea shells and marine mood. These pieces were added to my frame, tucking some behind the ephemera, some between the ephemera and some onto the raised edge of the reversed frame. 

I felt my piece needed even more texture to create the look of an underwater coral garden and to achieve this I added some "leaves" in Silver grey and peach as to me these looked a lot like branching coral . A coral reef would not be complete without some sand and so I then added some art stones and powder grain using gel medium.

As many of you will have realised if you follow my blogs on a regular basis no piece is finished without a title and for this I chose a Snipart word tropical adventure. My final touch was to add just a little hint of sparkle to the sea and for this I chose Fabrika Decor rainbow glitter mouse using my fingers.