Friday 28 February 2020

2020 #4 Mighty Mica: Beautiful moments with EGL {by Corrie Herriman}

2020 Topic 4: Mighty Mica


Introduction:
The composition of this canvas has so many delicate details to be appreciated - tone on tone stamping, using white or light paints to knock back a darker paint colour, using a stamping platform to great effect, coloured pencils, and of course, mica! Corrie shares each step so well, I'm sure by the end you will see how all those steps make a difference!
~ Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Corrie with you today, and I'd like to share with you a 20 x 20 cm canvas that I made with the beautiful new stamps by Gwen Lafleur. 

I was so excited when I received this gorgeous stamp set {EGL05} which is one of my favourites from the new release. I had never worked with mica, apart from with mica powder, so I went in search of some sheets it as I really wanted to try it. Unfortunately I could only find one pack and it was dark brown; not what I wanted so it was back to the drawing board to come up with another idea. When I found some mica flakes in the back of the cupboard that I had never used, I decided to use those instead.


This is what I came up with. It is a 20 x 20 cm (about 8" x 8") canvas. It was fun to make and putting the pieces of mica on the flowers was a labour of love. Here's how it came together:




I really enjoy colouring with Copic Markers but for this project I thought I would do something different. I stamped the whole set onto some {Smoothy Card} and left all the stamps in the stamping tool so I could re-stamp them later in the exact same spots. 



I used PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics to paint all the stamped images. Looks a mess like that but wait and see ! I used these colours : {Snowflake}, {Nougat}, {Gold Rush}, {Tinned Peas} and {Blue Bayou}. I used these same colours throughout the project. 


Remember I left all the stamps in the stamping tool. Here's why: all the stamp lines were gone because I painted over them, I just had to put it back into the stamping tool and re-stamp. I used Archival Ink in {Jet Black} to stamp before and after painting.


I then added a little bit of shading on all the images using coloured pencils. This worked a treat ! I then cut all the images out and went around the cut lines with a black marker to make it look like I cute them out perfectly!



Next I sat down with a cup of tea and added mica flakes, one by one to the flowers and the buds, so all the blue paint is covered in mica. It is such a shame that you can't really capture the shimmer/glitter in a photograph very well. Believe me though, it is very pretty and sparkly ! Next I turned my attention to the canvas.



I decided to keep the background really simple because I wanted those beautiful images to be the stars of the show. I painted the canvas with some Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in the colour {Nougat} and then added some stencilling with mask {PM008} By Emma Godfrey using the {Blue Bayou} Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic. 


Because I wanted the images to shine I knocked the stencilling back with more Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic, using the {Nougat} again and also the {Gold Rush}. I mainly used my fingers to do this. I also decided to add some dictionary words because I thought it would go well with my canvas. They are the words: Flora, Natural and Fauna.  After this I added the images together with a part of a word chip by Tim Holtz which I coloured with a Copic Marker to get it rid of the stark white.

When the images were adhered, I used some dimensional tape as well here and there, I thought it needed something else so I added a tiny bit of stamping. I used some Ink & the dog minis for this. They were {MN56} and {MN75}. 



As I said I really love this stamp set by Gwen Lafleur and I really enjoyed using it. I can see lots of other uses for it, including birthday cards, art journal pages (my next project) and even tags and ATC's. I really like how my canvas turned out and wonder how it would have looked in different colours and with maybe just a background made with mica powders or mica sprays. I hope I gave you some ideas to have a go yourself. 

Thank you very much for being here today and I hope you'll visit me at my other locations too : 

8 comments:

A Pink said...

Such a wonderful canvas, Corrie. Love the neutral tones and the balance of the overall design . As for the mica - worth the patient addition of each of the mica flakes aided by a good brew! Judging on how it looks from a photo I can bet it looks amazing IRL .
TFS
X

Miriam said...

This is wonderful Corrie. Fabulous project

Helen said...

This is stunning! love the blue tones.

PaperArtsy said...

Stunning Corrie!! Love this soft colourway too!!

Christine Alexander said...

OMG absolutely stunning

Lucy Edmondson said...

That is so beautiful, Corrie! X

Catherine said...

I love your project - its beautiful!!! What did you use to affix the mica flakes?

Gwen Lafleur said...

This is beautiful! I'm loving the mica flakes on the flower petals, and what a great way to use the stamp positioner to restamp after you painted! I'll definitely be using that idea :)