GD: Julie Ann Lee #2: The Green Man {Part 2}

"Hello everyone, Julie Ann here. Welcome back to the second of my 'Green Man' projects. This time Spring has well and truly sprung and it could even be Summer"!

Flowers are coming into bloom so blue has found its way into the green colour scheme and my 'Green Man' is most definitely a garden wall ornament attached by rusty nails to an ancient cracked wall. I am using Hot Picks 1009, Minis 18 and 96 and Lin Brown's flower sentiment EB05.

ELB05

Mini 18

Mini 96

To create my 'wall' I painted my canvas with a good coating of French Roast. When it was completely dry I added a thin layer of Crackle glaze applied with a palette knife. Again, when I was satisfied that this was completely dry, I painted in bold, thick strokes with Guacamole. The thin wire was curled around a pencil: we'll be coming back to that later!

Now for one of my favourite things - some corrugated card! This was in some packaging and I just loved the shape of it; I didn't need to alter those lovely curved edges. All I did was to guillotine down the middle, Paint with Frescos in Bora Bora, Sage, Guacamole and Hey Pesto and accent with some Treasure Gold in Green Amber, White Fire and Aquamarine

I then played around, positioning it exactly as I wanted it before sticking it down with Heavy Gel Medium.

I painted the mask with layers of Sage and experimented with positioning the wire as tendrils around the face.

Out come the trusty Smoothy Card, this time sponged with some Bora Bora edged with Inky Pool. I stamped the flower head from Hot Picks 1009 on it in Black Archival Ink and then clear UTEE.

Hot Picks 1009 

With a couple of coats of UTEE the flowers became quite mouldable.

Again I wanted to use the chunky edge of the canvas so I stamped the flourish from Mini96 using Fern Green Archival Ink. I smudged a little Inky Pool along the edges of the canvas too.

For my leaves on this canvas I painted layers using Antarctic, Bora Bora and Inky Pool and - yes - the lid of a deodorant! This idea of using 'found' objects to paint with is thanks to Darcy, both seeing her demonstrate, which is  a great experience and from her lovely journal page for Paper Artsy here!

When this is cut into leaves the stencil letters from Mini18 will appear just as highlights! I stamped over this with the Lin Brown flower sentiment 'When you see a field of dandelions...' and then die-cut into leaves.

I 

I Gessoed the wire tendrils and fixed them to the canvas with Heavy Gel Medium. As you may be able to see, I stamped the Lin Brown sentiment over my painty background and stamped some of my flowers with black Archival and some with Cornflower Blue Archival Ink mixing and matching with some green versions of the flowers.

All that remained was to add four rusty nails to complete the 'Green Man.' These screws were naturally rusted - a find from me raiding Mr Magpie's useful nails and screws tin. He kindly removed the backs for me with a hacksaw. I edged my canvas with some White Fire Treasure Gold to finish it off.

Thank you for inviting the Spirit of the Woods into your home! Tomorrow night I shall be playing with some new products on my third 'Green Man' canvas. Please do stop by to see how I clothe my final Spirit of the Woods in his new finery. Julie Ann x

Leandra Says: I love what you did to that corrugated card Julie Ann, how amazing does that Treasure Gold look on top of the painty layers!

Gillian Says: Oh I adore this .... I'm a sucker for crackle glaze backgrounds, wire and corrugated textures, the softer colour palette works beautifully.

If you would like to join in this week's challenge and play along with Julie Ann's techniques, then do link up your creativity here, and go in the draw to win some PA stamps of your choice! You need to link your entry by 17:00, Sunday March 16th 2014