Right outside my comfort zone!

I'm really not at home with mixed media - I tend to flounder around with no idea where I'm heading,  but this time i set out with a plan and a pretty good idea of what I wanted to achieve, and that helped me a lot!

I'd been trying to think of something to make for the current snippets challenge. My snippets basket is so overloaded that I tend to discard tiny scraps unless they are of something too special to part with, and this time I decided to use some of those tiny scraps of special stuff. So I fished out:
* a tiny scrap of facsimile early edition of Shakespeare text paper
* an almost as tiny scrap of corrugated kraft card
* a little piece of lilac patterned paper that was part of a sample set I was sent when I was thinking of buying my first craft CD, many many years ago (I didn't buy the CD so can't print any more!)

As the snippets were all so tiny, I decided I had to make something equally tiny to make them count, so I decided to try my hand at a canvas. It is only 7cm (just under 3") square.

I wish I'd taken step by step photos to make sure I remembered exactly  what I did! Hopefully writing it out will act as an aide-memoire for if I want to try anything this complicated again.

First I selected my colours - distress ink pads in Spun Sugar, Picked Raspberry and Seedless Preserves, plus a Rose Gold metallic paint and a brown Memento ink pad.

Next I found a scrap of pink ribbon. It was looking pretty crushed and wrinkled so I knew it would give the effect I wanted. I ran the darkest distress pad over both sides of it, spritzed it with a little water, scrunched it up into a tiny ball and left it to dry.

To prepare the canvas, I tore the text paper into rough strips and stuck them randomly over the canvas.  When they were dry, I painted over the whole thing with gesso and left that to dry while making a start on the tag.

I cut a tag shape from the card and painted it all over with the metallic paint. Once dry I brushed a little dilute gesso here and there to run into the "valleys" and swiped the medium distress pad over the "ridges". Punched a hole with the Crop-a-dile.

Now back to the canvas. I blended the three inks all over the surface, with the lightest in the middle and the darkest at the very edges. Then I took a very old Kanban stamp set which has 3 small butterfly stamps plus a larger butterfly and lace background, inked the background with the brown ink and pressed it to the canvas. This was probably an unnecessary step as the canvas didn't meet the stamp in the middle, just around the edges, but it did add a little more shade to the edges.

I used a small stencil and opaque texture paste to add some raised triangles to the upper right corner of the canvas, and when it was dry painted the raised areas with pink Wink of Stella. 

To complete the background, I brushed the Rose Gold paint all around the sides of the canvas.

I used the brown ink to stamp the butterflies onto the patterned paper, fussy cut them, used a finger dauber to add the darkest ink around the edges of the wings and painted the bodies with the Rose Gold.

Now I unrolled the ribbon and used it to make a bow and finish the tag, fraying all the cut ends.

I assembled the canvas using Pinflair glue which seems to stick just about any surface to any other surface, then added tiny highlights of clear Liquid Pearls. I was a bit conflicted about the button - I like the holes on a button to be horizontal, but as the holes and text image on it weren't at the same angle, then the text would have been crooked. I opted to keep the text straight - but as the glue dried it seems to have twisted around so now neither holes nor text are straight and all my fretting was a waste of time!

Phew! I think I used just about every weapon in my arsenal in this tiny weeny piece of work.

I am sharing this with

Pixie's Snippets Playground - challenge 385

Crafty Cardmakers - Things with wings 

Alphabet Challenge - K for Kraft