Follow Your Heart

What a beautiful day it is here. My husband and I went on a 2 mile walk and all the flowers are blooming, Spring has definitely sprung. 

I wanted to work on a project inspired by all the beautiful color and flowers that are popping out everywhere. I also wanted to do a few challenges while in that process. (you know me, loving my challenges). 

I am entering this project into the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp and Show - Their challenge this week is, none other than, COLOR.. yay! They are also giving away a 50.00 gift voucher for the shop to one random winner.

Eclectic Paperie  - Their eTeam Picks challenge this week is Flowers! Woot! They are giving away a 15.00 gift voucher to their online store. 

Ink On My Fingers - Hels Sheridan's Sunday Stamper challenge this week is "Paper," I actually used different kinds of paper in this project.

This is only my second canvas, ever. For some reason I'm so intimidated by the thought of creating on canvas and I'm not really sure why. I guess that's why I have taken this long to actually do something on a canvas. 

I like it, I really, really like it. I might have to do more of these.

Anyway, for starters on this I laid down some plain white tissue paper and some Tim Holtz tissue paper. I used Claudine Hellmuth's gel medium to adhere that to my canvas.

I set that aside to dry and then I used a piece of paper with writing on it to, free hand cut out a heart.

I used Wendy Vecchi white Embossing paste and a stencil to add some swirls and arrows to my heart and then set it aside to dry.

I then used a Wendy Vecchi Leaf stencil and some paint to paint some leaves onto the low corner of my canvas.

I am using a technique that my friend Anita Houston has talked about quite a bit. I have been wanting to give it a try.

By painting with Tim Holtz Distress paint and then spraying Dyan Reaveley sprays over it, the paint resists the spray and comes through, it's really neat. I didn't have the exact color I wanted in Tim Holtz paints so I used one color of regular acrylic paint.

I then Sprayed my canvas with three different colors of Dylusions Sprays. You can see that the paint comes through, it's awesome. I also love the way that the Tim Holtz tissue takes the color so well. I kind of just let the sprays drip down to the bottom.

Next, I painted the embossing paste designs that I had put onto the heart with distress paint.

I then sprayed the heart with Dylusions spray.

The same effect happened, although the green came off a bit so I repainted it once everything was dry.

I wanted to use this black and white Creative Memories paper to make some flowers but I wanted it to be a yellow color. I simply took out my distress stain in Squeezed Lemonade and stained it. I love how I can simply do this with the stain to change the color of paper.

 I used Tim's tattered flower garland strip die to cut out some flowers. I shaped those flowers with a pencil and some foam.

I then stamped onto each flower with a word stamp and Archival ink in coordinating colors.

I also used a few stamps from Wendy Vecchi and Tim Holtz to stamp onto my background prior to applying everything.

I used the Tim Holtz Word Play large Sizzix Die to cut out my sentiment. (one of my favorite dies)

Here is my finished project.

 Love the embossing paste

This sure was a fun project and I really like the outcome. Not too shabby and so much color. 

I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial for today. It's your turn to try a canvas :)

Thanks for stopping by.