Love this canvas

Thought I would share a canvas that I made yesterday.  I made it for my secret teacher at school (shh!  Don't tell!)  I was working with such limited info:  She likes the color blue.  She likes animals. She is a bit of a girly girl.  She is faith filled.

So, I just pulled out some of my stash and started creating.

Sorry about the poor picture quality.  It is pouring down raining right now and I had to deal with only indoor lighting.

The base is made using several different blue colored gelattos from Faber Castell.  I then added some old gospel music pages, cheesecloth, and then covered the whole thing with white crumbled tissue paper.    I let this coat dry then lightly drug a gesso filled brush down the whole canvas.  It "stuck" on the textured parts and left a nice effect.  Once all that was dry I decided that the color was "too blue".  So, I gave it a color wash using the Golden liquid acrylic phalo green.  I like how the music paper shows through and how the gesso has created some interesting texture along the edge.

While this was drying I laid out my elements.  I tried to use rich texture papers and deep, lovely colors.  Adding the vintage ribbons just gives the canvas some depth.  I used pastel pencils on the edges of the papers smearing as I went along,  to give some dimension.  Once I had chosen the papers, I attached them with foam tape, sometimes 2 of them stacked, to allow the papers to pop!  All of the other embellishments were added at the end.  The "love" letters are cork and have been slightly distressed with pastels and gesso that I colored with shavings of the pastels (kinda cool effect that does not show well in the photo above.  Sorry).

I really like how it turned out.  I added the bow around the edges to finish it off.  I hope she likes it.

Ok....the day begins at a dead run!  Go.  Be inspired today.  Or, go inspire someone today!