Sunshine, Freedom, and a Little Flower

 

Decided to add this to the Lindy's Stamp Gang Color Challenge. Here's the new colors that Lindy's has added to their already extensive line of sprays:

 

A few posts ago, I did another canvas with my new Lindy's sprays...sort of a tester canvas. This one I utilized more of the colors in the challenge. In fact, I decided to use all of them!

Sunshine, Freedom, and Flower Canvas:  The quote by Hans Christian Anderson is one of my favorites. When I saw the color challenge, I knew the blue and green would make a nice summer garden background. The orange reminded me of butterflies and the pink and purple would make lovely flowers. I pulled out a 12 X 12 canvas and began to play with the background. First, I laid down some heavy body acrylicTitanium white through a couple different stencils.  I used two sprays for my background, Rusty Lantern Lime and Time Travel Teal. They mixed a bit in the center to make a deeper fabulous green. They have a nice golden glimmer. I added a few more stencils, some text background stamps, and a splatter of black paint.

I had just bought some pink tissue paper and it looked so much like the Raspberry Lemonade color that I decided to make tissue paper peonies! (The classic tissue paper flower that I saw in a FB post about my niece recently.) I stamped a bunch of butterflies and colored them with Distress Ink (Dried Marigold).

 I have always wanted to just clear out some of my 3D embellishments by throwing them on the canvas like I've seen in so many posts. My only debate was: should I gesso them and then add color over the top? OR Just leave them be. After much consideration, just leaving them mostly alone worked better for me. I like the eclectic look of all the little things crowding together to make one big thing. I did alter the Bingo numbers with a little Lindy's spray in Black Orchid Silver after I gessoed them. (They were a bright red and it just wasn't going to go with this color scheme!) The spray gave them a nice silvery sparkle. Then, I added the stripes with a purple Sharpie and went over the numbers/letter with a black oil Sharpie.

I just hand wrote the quote on a piece of scrapbook paper, distressed the edges with ink (Dried Marigold) and tucked it behind my peonies. Then, I went about gluing everything down. I left the wings of the largest butterflies up just cuz that's the way I roll. I thought it was done but the paper needed something. I added a final splatter of white paint over everything.

I had a great deal of fun over three days of working on this piece. Next time, I think I will try adding the 3D stuff then gesso it all to see what that does. Remarkably, this dented my embellishment stash (Yay!) but also got me craving to buy more! (Buttons especially!)
Have a great weekend!
--Wy
"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."
--Hans Christian Anderson