Believe in Dreams by Gill Humphrey

In times of difficulty it is so important to believe in dreams and hence the title for my piece. I started with a 12 x 12 piece of greyboard adhering a  piece of paper from the 13 Arts Vintage Summer 12 x 12 Paper Pack with That's Crafty! Multi Purpose Glue. To add more interest to the background I mixeda tiny amount of Orange Rainbow Color Powder with White Modelling Paste. The resulting colour was still too orange to compliment the background piece and so I added a really tiny amount of the Black Rainbow Color Duo until I achieved the more muted vintage shade I was looking for. Having made my custom coloured paste I applied it through the 13 Arts Ornamental Stencil. The piece was then set aside to dry thoroughly.

More paper from the collection was then adhered to a That's Crafty! White/Greyboard Heart before being adhered to the main panel using 13 Arts Gel Medium I used scraps of greyboard to lift the heart off the base piece so that additional elements could be tucked in. I then added a white mandala sticker cut in half to my piece (these stickers were part of a bundle on Hochanda recently).

Floral elements were then cut form both the 12 x 12 paper collection and the 6 x 6 collection. I also adhered butterfly stickers and a black mandala sticker to scraps of paper and cut these out.

Once my elements were prepared I then layered them onto my main piece tucking the straight edges under the heart to disguise them. 

Finally I splattered That's Crafty! Liquid Acrylic Wax before sprinkling on and heat setting Weathered Gold Embossing Powder.

For those of you not used to making a mixed media piece focusing on papers I would encourage you to have a try using this step by step - you can of course substitute any co-ordinating elements to make a pretty, steampunky or even grungy piece according to your taste just be choosing paper packs that appeal however I would encourage you to buy both 12 x 12 and 6 x 6 pieces as this will give you a mix of sizes making it easier to layer elements together.