Exploring and a Winner!!

This weekend has been one of EXPLORING!  This morning was spent hiking in the conservatory right below our house.  We started the morning at my in-laws with a HUGE pancake/french toast breakfast (which was why the hike was needed! LOL!) with family friends and then we loaded up all the dogs (3!), kids (3!) and adults (9!) and spent the next couple of hours tromping.  I have to say that this is another reason that I live in Southern California!! It was absolutely GORGEOUS out!!  Temperature was 65 degrees and I was wishing I had worn shorts vs. jeans and a short sleeve t-shirt vs my light weight long sleeve one!!  Here is a little peek at one view that one of the boys took:

Things are kinda brown right now as we haven't had any rain.  If we ever get some, these hills will be GREEN!! 

I also did some exploring (ok....maybe it is more experimenting!) with a small canvas that I had picked up at Michael's one day.  I actually had a different idea in mind when I purchased the canvas, but didn't feel like dragging out my paints so I went a different path.

                                   

I first stamped the Brushed Wildflower silhouette from Just For Fun Stamps in versamark in one corner and used clear embossing powder to emboss ( I kinda missed  the top inner portion of my image.  Not sure if I didn't get powder on it, or didn't get the image stamped well in the versamark there.  Stamping on the canvas requires a bit more pressure I learned!!)  I wanted to kick my self that I didn't use my ever trusty stampamajig to make sure the image went to the bottom of the canvas, but OH WELL!!  I then layed down one of T!m Holtz's mini masks in the upper corner of the canvas.  I took distress inks in Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed and Fired Brick and rubbed them directly onto my non-stick craft sheet.  Gave them a misting until ink beads formed and layed my canvas down into the inks (like the first steps for the wrinkle free distress technique).  Now since the canvas has larger "pores" than paper does, the ink in spots just beaded versus soaked in.  So I grabbed a large 1" stipple brush and "pounced" the ink into the canvas.  I repeated that step one more time then moved the masked to the bottom corner and brushed some inks around to give me a more subtle image of the flourish (I'll explain why you can't really tell the difference of the two corners in just a moment).  I grabbed a piece of copy paper, layed it over the flowers and using my iron set on the highest setting, I melted the embossing powder off the canvas, giving a "faux bleach" look.  I pulled out some plain Mixed Minis grunge paper pieces from T!m Holtz's idea-ology line and painted them black with Folk Art's Metallic Sequin black acrylic paint.  While those were drying I went to work on the butterflies.  I wanted to use the large and small butterflies from Just For Fun Stamps (A3378, C3373....I couldn't get a direct link for these, but if you MUST have them, I'm sure that the folks at Just For Fun would be willing to help you out!! (wink)).  First I tried stamping with different colors on white paper.  Just didn't have the look I was going for~too stark or something that made me shudder!   So I stamped the images onto a transparency sheet with black stazon (I use write on transparencies from Office Depot) that I had altered with some Alcohol inks.  STILL not quite the pop that was needed, so I took a couple of Copic markers in a bright red and orange (YR07 and R27) and went over the "clear" section again to add more color.

Now here is the part that explains the almost disappearing flourishes.  If you haven't noticed lately, I've been LOVING Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist.  So, I thought that a beautiful shimmer in Pearl would just add that little "extra" to my canvas.  Spritzed on the Glimmer mist and MY DISTRESS INKS STARTED TO BLEED OFF!!  Now, when I've used the Glimmer Mists on paper, it DOES change the color a bit if it is applied over the inks.  But on the canvas, it made the distress inks bead up again as when I mist them with water on my craft sheet!  I don't know if the inks hadn't dried on the larger pores of the canvas yet or if the canvas material just makes the distress inks react differently (this will require some more experiementing another time).   Trying  not to panic, I grabbed the stencil brush that was still on my table and pounced the ink back into the canvas.  But OBVIOUSLY the inks had bled so it softened the edges of the top flourish and almost completely faded the bottom flourish (that already had a softer look by the technique applied in that area).  I carefully placed the masked back over the bottom flourish and added a bit more distress ink to try and bring it back somewhat.

Deciding that I had better quit before I messed things up beyond repair, I lined up my "explore" lettering and adhered using some Glossy Accents.  I then carefully cut out my transparency butterflies and rolled small glue dots to adhere only their bodies to the canvas so that their wings could provide more dimension. Some clear gems that I had already colored with Copics for other project (but never used) were applied to make a "flight path" for the larger butterfly. 

Over all I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but I think that this will be a stepping stone for some other projects in the near future!!

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FINALLY!! What you all are waiting for!!  The winner of the blog candy!!  I really enjoyed reading what your goals for creating this year are.  They gave me some "that would be a good idea!" moments!!  I also got some very good suggestions for this blog and I think I will explore more than one or two of them!!   So without further ado:  (insert drum roll here____________________________)

Random.DH (random kid was not available) picked comment number 1 out of the brown paper bag!! (for full accountability, I cut equal sized pieces of paper, numbered them for the total comments, folded each the same way and then placed all the pieces in a brown bag, shook it up good and RandomDH picked one out)
terriavidreader is the lucky winner for my one year blog candy!!  Congratualations Terri!! If you'd contact me with your addy I'll get your goodies in the mail this week!! (offroadtoad@msn.com, please put "blog candy" in the subject line so I won't "trash" your addy!!)

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Thanks for stopping by again today!!  It's been a great past year of blogging and I'm looking forward to another year!!