Together by Gill Humphrey

We are absolutely delighted to announce that Gill Humphrey will be guesting for us on Monday's on the blog!

I am so excited to have been invited by Laura to do a regular blog post on a Monday for That's Crafty! especially as I have only just joined the team and made my first sets of samples for the 13 Arts show on Hochanda on the 18th of March. As I have had a limited amount of time to prepare this post I am sharing with you a how to for one of my show samples - a mixed media canvas. This piece may look complicated but  I hope by breaking it down into steps some of you may have the confidence to try something similar.

I took a gesso primed heart shaped canvas and added some random areas of stenciling using 13 Arts Rosalie - Carte-Postale Stencil and 13 Arts Modelling Paste. When the paste was partially dry I sprinkled 13 Arts Metallic Color Glow - Ruby and new colours Coral Red and Golden Calcite over the piece focusing where I wanted the darker areas to be before spraying with water and letting the colours mix. I lifted colour from some areas with a kitchen towel to give variation in shades and left the canvas to dry thoroughly.

To colour the chipboard elements - 13 Arts Chipboard - His and Hers clock elements and 13 Arts Chipboard - Rosalie bird cages I made custom embossing powders by mixing in separate pots a little of the colour glow powders used above with clear detail embossing powder and then used this to emboss the elements. The final swirly piece in the background from my stash was embossed with Stampendous Frantage Shabby Pink. The chipboard words were coloured in two stages - firstly I used 13 Arts Splash Ink in Pink and when this was dry added a layer of Splash Ink Gold.

The door is made from resin primed with That's Crafty! White Gesso and then coloured with the Golden Calcite color glow. When this was dry I added a layer of Prima Finnabair gold wax.

The pink roses were fussy cut out of the 13 Arts 6 x 6" Rosalie Paper Pad. I then took a selection of white paper flowers from my stash sprayed them with water and then using a small paint brush custom coloured them with the same color glows made up with water.

Having customised my elements I then assembled my canvas using 13 Arts Gel Medium as my adhesive. Having added my elements I felt the background needed some added detail and I therefore added touches of stamping with Ranger Archival Ink in Potting Soil and 13 Arts A6 Stamp The Cage focusing on the areas of the stamp that had text.

To frame the piece I used the 13Arts Golden Calcite Colour Glow as a water colour and sponged it lightly around the edge of the piece before adding splashes with the Gold Splash Ink.