Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Remembrance Art

Another great idea by Gail regarding the Mind Wide Open contest - techniques used!! There were several new techniques & products I had purchased but hadn't used yet & this was the perfect opportunity to give them a try!

I started by printing off the image Gail provided onto photo paper and tore the edges using a deckle ruler. This was mounted onto a piece of 8"x10" matboard in a soft green. I used OmniGel by Houston Art to coat some sheet music printed on parchment paper. About 3 coats of the gel gave enough thickness. Let dry thoroughly. Then soak paper in warm water bath face down & begin to peel off paper backing. What you have left is a translucent image of the sheet music. Pieces of this were glued down with more OmniGel. Different colors of paint - soft green similar to background color, raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna - were drybrushed around perimeter of image to soften into background.

I used gold & silver metallic stamp inkpads and different rubber stamps in 2 different dragonfly shapes & various scroll shapes to add extra surface embellishment. I also cut out one of the dragonflies that had been stamped onto extra parchment paper to add as a freeform embellishment at the end. The words are printed on ExtravOrganza by Jacquard, a printable semitransparent silk with paper backing for computer printing. I played with the orientation of my text as well as color & typefaces. Once the words were printed, I cut them apart & the organza frays very easily for a different effect. Using short choppy strokes into the frayed edges gave a bit of movement and I then rolled the strips into a little bundle & rubbed the frayed edges over the stamp pads to darken. The organza strips are left loose on the front and the ends wrapped to the back & secured.

My last embellishments were Grungeboard scrolls painted in the background color with random embossing ink applied & silver embossing powers added. There are 3 small plastic translucent tiles in the lower right corner that also have silver embossing from one of the scroll stamps. Frame as desired!

1 comment:

Pat Winter Gatherings said...

Your entry is very beautiful. Love the dragonflies. Good luck!