Guest Designer for Frosted Designs

Hi Guys!

I'm so honoured to be invited on this fabulous team at Frosted Designs as a Guest Designer. This is my first ever designer post so I'm super excited!

I made a little 6x6 inches canvas piece meant for home decor for this tutorial. 

I first started out with priming my canvas with heavy white gesso by Prima Finnabair. I then sprayed randomly all over the canvas (Don't think too much! Just do it!) using Heidi Swapp's Gold mist, Tim Holtz Distress Spray in Tattered Rose and in Shabby Shutters. After everything dried, I pulled out my new flourish stencil from Tim Holtz and applied a thick coat of White Sand Texture Paste from Prima Finnabair. 

I have to say this texture paste has got pretty interesting texture after dried. It dries shiny and rough. It's actually very nice to touch. As you can see from the picture, I lightly brush on some gesso to make the flourish stand out better. It sort of created a white-wash effect which was matching to the background, giving off that very antique/vintage-looking vibe.

I also brushed on a light coat of Ranger's Clear Crackle and made it more visible by watercoloring Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Brushed Corduroy. 

With a new shade of dark brown, I think it made the background stand out even more as there's now a mixture of different shades of browns and greens. 

Now that the background is done, I need to think of what to embellish it.

I gave myself a challenge to use some of the stuff that was long forgotten. Haha. Such as this Tattered  Floral Bigz die from Sizzix. I actually bought it LONG LONG LONG ago but didn't use it at all. So I cut out a couple of the same sizes and layered them up. Glued down a matching button in the centre and altered the flower with Tim Holtz Distress ink in Brushed Corduroy.

This is the final look of the canvas!

As you can see, I die cut some leaves from the Prima leaves dies for layering. I also managed to dug out a long forgotten border punch and punched a strip and glued it down vertically. Most of the flowers I used were from Prima and I also added some mica fragments in Tea Stained colour from Stampendous. I loved how the dark colour of the mica fragments increased the interest of the canvas as the rest of the colours were pretty soft. The sentiment was actually a cut out from Kaisercraft's patterned paper. I also painted a light coat of gesso on the outer petals of the flowers to give some highlights. It also had the effect of pulling everything together. 

Here are some close-ups shots. 

I enjoyed the process of making this canvas. The colour scheme is actually pretty challenging for me as I never thought green and light pink (that's the original colours of the sprays, but everything became brownish after they dried on canvas. Mediums can be unpredictable! Hahah) would go well together and this is my first time succeeding in creating a vintage layout. My previous attempts didn't work out as my style of embellishing stuff is not vintage at all so I'm super happy that I can finally strike the 'vintage' theme off my to-do list as well as using those long forgotten products. Haha. 

So...That's all for today. 

I hope you like my post and also feel inspired to try out mixed media if you haven't. 

Cheers! :)