Crafty Schamfty Fridays 6

Oh, my friends!!! HAPPY . . .

I'm so glad to have you here!

This week, we're going to jump right into our crafty schmafty goodie, because I been a painting fool and am just dying to share my latest piece with you!  I thought it would be fun to take you through the process of my painting, in case you ever wondered . . . "How does she do that?" It's a pretty simple thing . . . so let's begin!

When those creative juices start flowing and I feel like painting, I usually start by looking through a couple of my sketch books for inspiration - just to see if anything is moving me.

 

 Next, I grab a canvas . . . and start with something. This week I took some swirly stencils I had and applied gesso to them, to build up some cool texture to the canvas before even starting with the paint.

It's all about building the texture up. I am ALL ABOUT texture! I mod podged a couple pieces of a doilie to the canvas, too. I love how they look once painted. SO cool . . .

While the gesso and doilies dried, I took a separate piece of watercolor paper, and mod podged some really cool (and OLD) tissue paper to it. I crinkled the tissue paper up to give added texture. I knew that this would be an important part of my finished piece, and can't wait to show you what it turns into!

As soon as the gesso and mod podge have dried . . . I start scraping paint onto the canvas. Lots of it. Lots of colors. Lots of direction. There is no right or wrong. I just keep playing with it and adding layers of colors and keep scraping, adding and scraping. You can see where the doilie is at on the right side of the canvas below, as well as the gesso swirls on the left. I love the texture coming through.

Next, I add some loopy flowers (my technical terms) straight from the bottle of paint. These also added some awesome texture to the piece, but had to dry overnight. I then took my mod podged tissue paper (which had dried) and cut the shape of a bird out of it. I had a pretty good idea and vision of where I wanted the piece to go, and this bird was going to be a big part of it.

 

Next, I printed out my words and started to form my bird cage from old sheet music. The words come from me . . . my thoughts, my journals, things that I want to put out into the world. I often think that the messages in my art are little things I want my daughters to know and to believe. My art is kind of like a great big message to them.

I LOVE using sheet music in my art. My mother-in-law and father-in-law always pick some old music up for me when they are at estate sales. I have such an awesome collection of beautiful music - some date pretty far back. They are amazing . . .

Next, I start to glue everything down. I use tacky glue, and then once everything is set, I seal it with mod podge (my FAVORITE!)

A little bit of marker on top of everything, just to add a few little touches . . . and then, I am done.

And a close-up . . . for good luck!

I absolutely LOVE the process of this piece. I love the layers of texture. I love the message. I love the colors.

It's a good one.

Thanks for taking a look at my art! If you have a crafty schmafty piece to share with us, please leave me a comment and I will make sure I stop by to see it!!! And make sure you stop by next Friday for another "Crafty Schmafty Friday" post!