On January 8th, I shared  on social media a glimpse of a mixed-media project that I was  working on. Did you see it?

In my Facebook post, I promised that as soon as the person I made it for received it, I’d share more photos.  Well, I gave the project as a gift in January, BUT I completely forgot to take photos! Things happen, weeks turn into months and before you know it, it’s May! And I still haven’t shared the photos. Today, I’m putting things right!

Here’s a bird’s eye view of the completed “Inspire” altered canvas.

Stampin’ Up! can enhance other things in your craft stash.

If you are anything like me, you probably have collected all sorts of odds and ends in your craft stash over the years. These coveted items might have been on special, or a gift or something you thought would work on a project but when you got it home it wasn’t right or you found something else that was perfect.  Over time these craft supplies pile up. Especially now that you’ve discovered all the perfectly coordinated Stampin’ Up! products. Sometimes your craft stash threatens to overtake your craft space and it becomes a challenge to use your “old” stuff.

Maybe it’s time to use your craft stash?

I’m sharing my process to create this altered canvas project to demonstrate how you can combine your Stampin’ Up! and non-stampin’ Up! stash.  In my stash, I had a metal thimble, a wooden ruler, scissors and thread spools from before I became a demonstrator. These are perfect for this gift because the demonstrator whom I made it for used to do ribbon embroidery and is pretty handy with the sewing machine.  The wooden embellishments were very generously inked with Versamark and heat embossed with the gold, silver and copper embossing powder.  I repeated the process a few times to get an even coverage.

My friend has an electric cutting machine so she cut the word “inspire” from silver foil using the font I wanted to fit the canvas. Surprisingly, I didn’t have a die in my collection to do the job!

Other non-Stampin’ Up! products used in this project are a canvas, white gesso, white acrylic paint, a wide paint brush, chicken wire and a hot glue gun.  I also used a number of retired Stampin’ Up! products but I’ll include those in the list at the end.

The Canvas Base

The canvas was a cheap craft shop find.  It was sealed with White Gesso and left to dry before being coloured with white acrylic paint tinted with the Dapper Denim Ink Refill.   Of course, if you are making one of these and are short on time, you don’t have to “seal” your canvas but I find it gives a better finish and the ink/acrylic paint mix sticks better. I mixed my paint and  Dapper Denim ink refill on my silicone craft sheet adding a few drops of ink at a time until I had the shade I wanted.  The paint washes off easily in water. I highly recommend wearing disposable gloves throughout this project otherwise you could end up with inky fingers. My nails and fingers were blue for days! After the paint was dry I added some random splatters of dapper denim ink.

The Flowers

While you are waiting for your canvas to dry, you can get started on the flowers.  This will take some time.  I dragged out my Big Shot and every single Stampin’ Up! flower framelit, thinlit, die and punch that I own (new and retired) and cut a ton of flowers from Dapper Denim and Whisper White cardstock and white filter paper (retired). At this point, I also die cut three leaf sprigs from the Silver Glimmer Paper. Most flowers have three or five layers – that’s a lot of cutting.   I was going to emboss some flowers with a textured embossing folder too but to be honest I ran out of energy! Sorry, I haven’t detailed what flower dies or punches that I used as there is such an assortment.  I encourage you to use what you have.

Once I’d sponged all the cardstock flowers with Dapper Denim ink and my sponge daubers, I layer them and secured them with a mini brad in the centre and a touch of multi-purpose glue.  When the glue dried, I spritzed them with water so they were just damp and scrunched them up into ball and left them to dry.  When they were dry I gently separated the layers and carefully curled the petals with my bone folder.  Curling petals is a very delicate process…a number of petals were lost because I tried to rush.  This isn’t a project to rush.

Prussian Blue Brusho Crystal Colour to the rescue

Next up, it was time for the white filter paper flowers. Trust me you will want to wear rubber gloves for this step!  Each flower was spritzed with water using my Stampin Spritzer and then sprinkled with the Prussian Blue Brusho Crystal Color Powder and spritzed with water again. While they were damp (hence the need for gloves), I layered different sized flowers and secured them with a Silver mini brad like the card stock flowers and gently but tightly scrunched them, sprinkled them with more Prussian Blue brusho and spritzed again. These flowers were my favourite because they are soft and delicate and add a totally different texture to the canvas. Coloring them with Brusho powder ensured each flower was unique and interesting.  Okay, I admit colouring the filter paper with the Brusho powder was an experiment! The results were way better than I hoped for.  By the way, this technique works beautifully on uncoated white tissue paper too.

Adding Texture with Embossing Paste

Once the canvas was dry, I wanted to add some interest to the background.  Texture paste is the easiest way to do that.  First up ,I grabbed my Dapper Denim Ink Refill, palette knives, embossing paste and silicone craft sheet and colored the embossing paste a lovely shade of denim. This was thickly applied it directly to the canvas in a diamond shape using the palette knife.  I dried it with the heat tool on the low setting. Be careful not to use the high setting as it causes the embossing paste to bubble. To add more interest I added streaks of more denim tinted white embossing (several shades lighter than the first layer),  shimmery white and silver embossing paste, drying each layer of paste between .  I learned the hard way, that it’s really important to have some warm soapy water on hand to clean up your craft mat and palette knives as soon as you’ve finished using them. That stuff sets hard very quickly.

Bringing it all together.

After many days of cutting, coloring, experimenting  and getting very very inky, it was time to bring it together.  Basically, I found the the largest flower and glued it to the middle of the canvas, added some chicken wire and worked my way out. squishing flowers into their spots and filling any gaps with small flowers wooden accents and metallic thread.  I used a combination of multipurpose glue, crystal effects (retired), mini dimensionals and my hot glue gun to secure everything to the canvas. I flicked splotches of wink of stella over the whole canvas.  The edges of the flowers were also accented with the wink of stella.  I added some random drops of crystal effects and rhinestones to the background as every project needs some bling!

Here’s the completed altered canvas from a different perspective:

If you enjoyed  learning about this project and would like to make a small mixed media wall hanging,  book into the Off-the-Page class on Friday, 25th May from 7pm.

Make sure you leave comment to let me know what you think of this project and whether you’d like to see more posts like this one.

Birthday Celebration Give Away!

Earlier this week in my Share What You Love blog,  I mentioned that May is my birthday month and told you that to celebrate I am giving away a Statement of My Heart stamp set. It’s really easy to enter – three simple steps:

1. Make sure you subscribe to The Creative Eclectic’s mailing list  (if you already subscribe you have already done step one)
2. Share this blog post on Face book and/or your other social media sites (e.g. Pinterest, Instagram, ) and
3. Comment on the Share What You Love blog post why you would like the Statement of My Heart set before 8th May 2018.

You must be an Australian Resident to enter.  The winner will be announced on 10th May 2018.  Good Luck!

Stampin’ Up! Product Used