Art in Bloom Collage {with Eclectica³ Lin Brown Stamps by Linda Cain}

Hi everyone, Linda Cain here. And we're ready to Create some ART!

We think Spring is finally arrived, so I thought some Flowers would be fun to play around with today.

This is a 14 centimetre (or 5 1/2 inch) square pressed wood plaque with a bevelled edge I found at a craft store on vacation. It makes a great stable substrate for this project.

It has two holes that will be perfect for adding fibre so it can hang on the wall. 

The entire plaque is base coated with Nougat Fresco Paint and a piece of foam.

The next layer is Grunge Paste I added this through stencils from Lin Brown, PS002 and PS003.

  

When dry, I started adding colour, keeping in mind the upper portion is sky, and the lower section is grass. Mermaid and Guacamole, then Pansy and Eggplant are all added with foam squares.

We're going for bright and contrast here, so using Prima Metal Flowers, I sponged on Caramel, Tango, London Bus and Eggplant to the flower on the left.

Lilac, Pansy, and dots of Eggplant are added to the flower on the right. When dry, I stamped with Red Geranium Archival ink and a script stamp from ELB06. I sanded it back a bit to reveal the middle area with a fine Sanding Block. 

This flower is painted with London Bus, Pumpkin Soup and Tango. When dry, I sanded it back with a very fine sanding block and polished the revealed metal.

  

I decided I wanted this to be Shabby Chic in nature, so I stamped another script stamp from ELB06 using Sepia Archival Ink. Then I took a cotton cloth and wiped it off. You can see the lighter images underneath the darker images of script. Heat set and stamp the image again leaving it the darker image.

The Leafy Branch is stamped with Mocha Mousse using ELB04. The cool thing about this cling stamp is you can bend them in different directions on your stamp block to make them go in whatever direction you want. Here it bends slightly to the right. 

I sanded down some areas of the Grunge Paste and then used a dark purple and olive green archival ink with script and dots from MN72 Mini. 

I like to add black permanent pen around images to make the color pop. That seemed to work here to define the images much better. Plus I added a few extra leaves here and there to balance things out.

The top flower pieces are painted with Pansy, Pumpkin Soup, and Guacamole and then wiped with a cotton cloth and polished. The Screw Nut has Caramel and Pumpkin Soup in a couple of layers to make a contrasting centrepiece on that flower.

Art in Bloom is stamped from the ELB01set onto White Stamping Card that was coloured with Distress Inks and layered onto black chipboard.

After adding the brads in the centres, I used foam tape to glue the flowers to the piece.  Use a strong metal glue to adhere  the far left flower.

The Natural Trimming seemed to keep with the theme and was easy to add with a couple of knots.

So, that's my little piece of Spring Shabby Chic that I hope will brighten your day and get your creative juices flowing. Have fun, and don't forget to add your pieces to the blog for a chance to win!

Your Friend in ART,

Linda

A huge thanks to Linda from PaperArtsy for this gorgeous hanging board. So many lovely details to see in the layers. We especially like the way the flowers are built up. Stamping over the grunge paste leaves is very effective, and shows how smooth the paste can be once sanded. 

If you would like to join in our weekly challenge with any of this week's guests who have blogged since Sunday night, then join in to link up your creativity HERE you will go in the draw to win PA stamps of your choice! You need to link your entry by17:00 (London time) Sunday April 6th 2014