Hey Blogsters:
Well, right about now, I am sick of the cold here in New England. But, on a good note, the daylight is around a little longer now. I shouldn’t rush it. Time goes by too fast enough as it is.
I’ve finished my Mirror Frame that I did for a special family couple of their two children. I hope they don’t read this post yet, as I haven’t given it to them.
The size is 10″ x 10″. I put something in front of me while I took the picture so there would be no reflection in the mirror.
The frame is made from wood (purchased at craft store), covered with 2 layers of tissue paper applied with Golden Gel Medium. Once dry, I painted it with Golden’s Fluid Acrylic Carbon Black.
The squares are made of chipboard, they are about 1 1/2″. I used Claudine Hellmuth’s Sticky Back Canvas for printing my pictures on. I gathered my pictures from my photo software and put them on MS Powerpoint, making sure they were the same size as the chipboard. I always use MS Powerpoint for printing and arranging several pictures on one page and in one place. Once I practiced printing on paper several times to get the right size of the squares, I felt confident to print on the SB Canvas.
Cut the pictures from the canvas. Before you stick them to the chipboard, I used a black paint pen to paint edges of each chipboard square. Burnish the picture to each chipboard. If the canvas spilled over a little on the chipboard, I just used a craft blade and self-healing mat to trim to size. Sandpaper around the edges to sand down the tiny “burrs” of the canvas. With a make up sponge wedge, I pounced the sponge on a StazOn black ink pad and just went around the edges of the picture to give it a shadow’y (is that word?) look. Important: At this point I laid out all the squares on newspaper in a well ventilated area and sprayed on a matte sealer; I used Preseve Your Memories (PYM) spray. Great stuff!
Before you glue down the pictures to the frame, I took silver acrylic paint and went around the edges of the frame and the mirror with a sponge. Now, the squares are ready to be glued down to the frame. Arrange the squares to your liking and glue down with strong glue; I used Weld-Bond.
In the top left hand corner of the mirror, I made a tiny polymer clay heart and after it was baked and sealed, I wrote the word “love” on it. Glue to mirror with strong glue; I used Liquid Nails.
I hope you enjoyed this small tutorial. Give it a try. Nothing beats a handmade gift - made from the heART.
Here is another playful piece I did in my studio.
I was playing with some colors on my palette paper. After I was done, I swirled and smooshed the colors around for a cool background. If you think about it, palette paper is made for wet paints, so why not recycle the pages to put in your journals, etc. It takes a lot of wet media abuse.
As you can see, I just doodled with white paint pen. Then I took some scrap tissue paper and glued a 1/2 face size to the edge. Painted that with Golden’s Titan Buff Fluid Acrylic paint; let dry. Then just played and drew a face and painted it. Nothing serious at all.
Let’s call her……..um…..Fiona………. I put that doodle in her hair. I think she’s looking at it saying… “she really just didn’t put that in my hair, did she? That is so ugly.” She hates it, I can tell..
Thanks for stopping by.
Judy
