2019 #8 Put a Brush on it: Life's Great Canvas with Hot Picks {by Nikki Acton}

2019 Topic 8: Put a Brush On It

We are still playing 'spot the brush' here on the blog, and I love Nikki's interpretation! I'll leave you to figure it out...Plus she has made one strip stamp into something much bigger. Kind of like making tiled wallpaper! ~ Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Nikki from Addicted to Art here with you today, with my take on our current theme.

I have used one of the most recent Hot Picks stamp sets and created a tiled background, before adding my paint brushes as an inner frame to the canvas. It's all a little busier on the eye than I intended - but with the fabulous word stamp from one of Emma Godfrey's stamp sets, I think the craziness matches the sentiment!

As I seem to be doing a lot at the moment I started with a colour theme and some gel- printing, getting a little carried away - creating more than I needed with more detail than I needed as most of it was going to be covered! I do love these prints and you will see later how I used some scraps to decoupage too.

I selected Glacier Ice, Spanish Mulberry, Little Black Dress and Steel Grey Fresco Acrylic paints.

It's fun to make marks with random items (above) and PaperArtsy Stencil PS102 from Sara Naumann. 

Such a shame to cover lovely prints but that is what I did! I selected darker ones for stamping in Versamark and heat embossing with white embossing powder and lighter ones for stamping in Black Archival Ink.

I hope you can see how fabulously the detail stamps!!! The stamp is from Hot Picks 1902.

  I cut all the little squares out - so I could tile them onto my canvas (8 inches square). 

There was still no final plan at this point except the addition of my 'paint brush frame' but I remembered the words on Emma Godrey's stamp set EEG15, so began to work on this as my focal point.

The rest of the gelli prints came in handy to decoupage some greyboard squares and as the background to stamp on.

I was getting a bit carried away now! I painted my old brushes black but they needed a little something so I added dots of paint with the end of my brush and also did the same on the decoupaged squares.

This project is a good example of where I have a vague idea, start something and let it evolve. Many years ago I studied art at college and this was a big learning point for me - having a more scientific background I expected to plan for an end point, but with art the process is SO important in influencing the final outcome. 

Nikki

Blog: Addicted to Art
Instagram: @Nikki_Act
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