December 2013 - Christmas Canvas Swap

One of the girls in my quilting group inspired several of us to begin collecting art supplies and do a bit of dabbling with multi-media art. We have formed a little off-shoot group (like any of us really need more hobbies!) and catch up every few weeks for some messy art play.

We had our first canvas swap - mostly as a way to get some of us to actually create something with all those supplies we have been accumulating. It was a Christmas themed canvas lucky-dip swap and we ended up with six people participating. Here they all are, lined up for the swap. It is amazing how different they all are.

I got to take home the lovely little Shepherd Canvas made by Rachel. If you click on that link you can go straight to her blog post and read about the thought behind this artwork, and also see a much better photo. He came home with me and took up residence on our mantelpiece among the Christmas decorations until the start of January. He has now moved into my sewing room where he is waiting patiently for his own space on the wall. Jack was very taken with it, running his fingers over it and wanting to know how Rachel made the shepherd stand out from the background - there is a lot of texture in this piece. In the end he decided 'she must be a shepherd-maker' and we settled down to have a bit of fun making up stories about what happened to the sheep.

I made the purple ballerina. She was going to be an angel or Christmas fairy, but the idea sort of morphed into this as I worked on it.
I love the background. I used scrunched up glad wrap over wet acrylic paint to get some depth and movement. I also used purple and silver Inka Gold paint, Perfect Pearls silver metallic powder and Opal Dust iridescent glitter paint to get lots of glimmer happening.
The star is made from moulding paste applied through a stencil and then coloured with silver Viva Inka Gold metallic beeswax-based paint. It is highlighted with plastic gems in shades of purple.
The girl is collaged onto the canvas. Her outfit was made in several layers using scrapbook paper and scrunched tissue paper.
The lettering was traced onto tissue paper and then decoupaged onto the canvas, traced with silver paint pen and then outlined with black ink.


 This was a fun swap and I think everyone enjoyed pushing their boundaries and seeing where it took them. Hopefully there will be more arty swaps in the future.