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 : 

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