Flutter...

Happy Monday friends...

Hope you've all had a wonderful weekend and looking forward to the week ahead! Thank you to everyone who joined us for last week's challenge, it was fun to look at all the entries and see what you've all been creating.

So, now it's time for a new challenge to begin and this week, on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog, our theme is called Bright & Cheerful and we hope you will play along with our fun challenge.

Now, I must admit I do love my muted, tranquil colours and as you probably know by now, I love anything vintage ~ so...with the theme in mind I thought long and hard and in the end I decided to break out my Alcohol Pearls and Distress Paints to create a layered canvas panel that is definitely full of bright and cheerful colour.

So, let's get started and here's how I made this panel...

To begin with I made my background and cut a canvas board to measure 18 x 22cm and painted it with a combination of Picket Fence and Antique Linen.

I then cut a panel of canvas paper, slightly smaller in size than the panel and started to layer my paints and add the colour. I started with a layer of Cracked Pistachio, followed by Twisted Citron and Peacock Feathers. Each time I lay down my paint colour, I then heat dry before adding the next one, which is important as you don't want to make the colours become muddy, they need to be individual. Finally, I added some gesso over the top, using an old credit card to scrape the paint down over the surface before drying the background thoroughly.

Once it is dry, I adhered the panel to my canvas board and added some torn design tape around the outside edges to give a little more interest to the piece.

Moving onto the inner panel, I started by taking a piece of Yupo and applying my Alcohol Pearls ~ dripping a combo of Tranquil and Sublime. I then applied a little Blending Solution to my tool and just pounced the tool over the top of the colours to blend them over the background. Once I was happy, I then dropped some more of the inks over the top, a little more Sublime, a touch of Tranquil and all combined with Alchemy and Villainous. After applying some small drops of Blending Solution and allowing the inks to blend, I allowed them to dry.

To add some more interest to the background, I added some stamping and used the Mini Media Marks Stamp Set. I inked up one of the foliage stamps with the Versamark Ink Pad and then randomly stamped the image onto the alcohol inked background before sprinkling white embossing powder over the top and heat embossing until molten.

I machine stitched a border around the outside in black cotton and then flicked some Black Soot Distress Paint across the surface.

Once the paint was dry, I then took another of the Media Marks stamps and used these add some interest in the bottom left hand corner, stamping the circles in Jet Black Archival Ink.

After adding some doodling around the edges and stamping some numbers taken from the Correspondence stamp set, in the top right hand corner, I matted my background onto some black card, followed by some gold metallic kraft stash and mounted the layers onto the centre of my canvas panel.

Now to create the focal point and that gorgeous butterfly...

I stamped the butterfly from the Flutter stamp set in Jet Black Archival Ink, onto watercolour card and then watercolored the image with a selection of Distress Marker Pens and a water brush. I then took the corresponding die from the Sizzix set and cut out the image of the butterfly.

After cutting a twig from my garden, I placed the twig over a bed of cheesecloth that I dyed with a combination of Antique Linen and Crushed Olive Distress Spray Stains and attached both pieces with Matte Collage Medium. I then attached the butterfly to the twig using the collage medium and set the piece to one side for everything to set in position and be really secure.

You can see from the photo below that the butterfly is literally suspended in flight on the branch, which together with the cheesecloth, gives it the support.

For the finishing touches, I added some Hardware to the corners of the panel...

and then placed a Clippings Sticker along the bottom.

Finally, I added some sparkly gems around the butterfly, placing them directly onto the background.

So, that's my project for this week and I hope you've loved how I used colour to bring this piece to life!

Have fun creating your projects and don't forget, you can find more inspiration from my talented teamies over on the challenge blog and every week, one lucky random participant has the chance to win a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp. You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in and good luck....

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by today and hope to see you again soon, love Emma xxx

Recipe for project:

Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous: Mini Media Marks, Flutter, Correspondence
Tim Holtz/Sizzix: Flutter 
Distress Paint: Picket Fence, Black Soot, Cracked Pistachio, Peacock Feathers, Twisted Citron
Distress Spray Stain: Antique Linen

Distress Crayons: Pumice Stone
Distress Spray Stains: Antique Linen, Crushed Olive
Distress Marker Pens
Alcohol Pearls: Villainous, Alchemy, Sublime and Tranquil

Idea-ology: Hex Fasteners, Clippings Stickers, Tim Holtz Merchant Design Tape

Mediums: Matte Collage Medium, Versamark Ink Pad, jet Black Archival Ink
SSS White Embossing Powder
Prima Marketing Hardware Accents
Surfaces: Mixed Media Heavystock, Watercolour Card, Yupo Card, black Card, Metallic Kraft Stash, Media Board

Tim Holtz Media Glass Mat

Heat Gun
Palette Knife
Big Shot
Cheesecloth and twig from my own stash