Hello!

This week I have a piece of mixed media artwork to share that was inspired by walks in the countryside when the fields are full of poppies amongst the wheat and oats grown near where I live.

My chosen substrate is actually a leftover piece from the centre of an MDF frame Upright as these are useful for smaller pieces of artwork when you don't have much spare time.

I took one of Melina's gorgeous masks and applied a pattern to my surface with white texture paste.

I then gave the surface an undercoat of Evergreen Multi Surface Paint as I wanted a darker shade as the base for my next crackle step.

I brushed on a coat of That's Crafty! Crackle Glaze and once it was tacky, about half an hour in this hot weather, I added a coat of Lime and Green Multi Surface Paints.

I stamped my chosen poppy 3 times on smooth white stamping card and coloured the images with satin inks. My technique to get a vibrant shade for the poppy heads is to first brush on a couple of thin layers of red ink. Once thoroughly dry, I then load up my brush with colour and add puddles to the petals. If you do this and let it dry well (overnight is best), you get a lovely shimmering coat of glowing colour. You can see below the before and after.

I next added a further step to my background, splattering on watered down Bright Red and Yellow Multi Surface Paints and White Gesso.

Once it was dry, I added my poppies, some of the flower heads and leaves were raised on scrap MDF bits. I finished off with one of Lynne's lovely text images which fit my theme so well.