Finishing touches .......

Happy Wednesday ......

Another week is flying by.
Things are starting to get busy over here with preparations for this years Isle of Man TT ..... only 10 days to go before it all gets underway with the start of Practice Week .... whoo hoo!! And when it all comes to a close we're off to the Cotswolds again for our little family week away .... can't wait!

Things are busy in the old craft room too ...... DT stuff to do, workshop to prep, an SU party to organise at mine ready for when the new catalogue launches, and a few bits and bobs to do just for me ..... because I can!!

I've just finished off adding the final touches to my project from one of the workshops I went on whilst I was across in the UK.  Here's what we got up to with the lovely Maria Simms ...... based on a workshop done by a talented lady named Debbie Rock (I think all the workshops have been done now so I'm safe in showing this  ....... I hope I am anyway!)

We had great fun getting all inky and covered in paint, creating the centre panel on the actual day of the workshop.  And then I've since mounted mine onto the larger canvas, and added more background detail with a stencil and some texture paste.

There's a bit of everything on here ..... stenciling (my favourite Brick Wall), texture paste (love it!!), paint, mica sprays, and lots of embellishments.

There's lace, paper flowers, lots of metal trinkets.  Die cuts, beads and I even added an old piece of chain on there

Everything was held in place with gel medium and dried off with the help of a heat tool.  The gel medium lets you create layers with the embellishments giving lots of depth and texture to your projects

Once we were happy with the layout everything was painted over in either black or white (as you've probably guessed .....I went with black)
Next came the fun part .... lots of spray inks and mica sprays to give the colour and sheen to the finished panel. More mica was brushed over in parts to give more depth of colour

And then I finished everything off with a touch of Treasure Gold Gilding Wax, just here and there to give more shine

Not sure the colours come across well in the photos ...... they're much more intense in real life.
I used a pink shade and touch of purple down the left hand side blending into turquoise and blue shades with just a touch of green on the right.  Then to highlight in places, I spritzed over with Perfect Pearls in the Heirloom Gold shade and finished with White Fire Treasure Gold.  Really pleased with how this turned out ....... very Finnabair-esque I think.

I wanted to mount it onto something bigger so, I used the brick wall stencil again onto a 12x12 canvas board to add some background detail and texture.  Painted the whole thing black and then added just a smidge of the White Fire Treasure Gold here and there, to bring out some of the detail of the brick wall

Thanks to Maria for another fabulous workshop and thanks to Debbie Rock for the inspiration.

Thanks for popping by .... enjoy the rest of your day.
I've got to tidy the old craft room .... again!!! and then a little bit of reading to do later.
A friend and I popped to the book/art shop over in Port Erin yesterday, and along with stocking up on some watercolour card, a new canvas and some new paintbrushes, I found this on the shelf ...... (I only went in for a look!!!)

I do like a nice G&T as you all know ....... and I'm gathering quite the collection now

 so I thought I'd try and learn a little more about Mother's Ruin

Cheerio until next time ......