Fruits Of Our Labours Mixed Media Canvas

Hello and welcome, Deb here today for Mixed Media Wednesday to share a project with you that was inspired by our August challenge, Harvest with the twist of adding Fruit.

I have a quick tutorial on how I made my 'Fruits Of Our Labours' mixed media canvas, hope you will enjoy it.

I started out with a 5" x 7" flat artists canvas and added die cut letters to spell out my words.  I have A LOT of die cut letters from previous projects that I hoard keep in my stash so I used them and didn't worry about what material or colour they'd been die cut from as I intended to cover everything with gesso.  I layered three of each letter together for some dimension and adhered them to the canvas.

The wide serif letters are from Tim Holtz's Boardwalk die and the narrow sans serif letters are from his Alphanumeric dies.  I gave the whole canvas a coat of gesso and let it dry.

Sprays and drips with Distress spray stain in shades of yellow and orange came next along with some spritzes of water to blend the colours.

After the stain had dried, I sealed the whole canvas with Distress Matte collage medium and then intensified the colours by scribbling with Distress crayons and blending with my fingers.  I added some shading to the lettering with shades of brown Distress crayons and then gave each letter a dusting of Perfect Pearls.  The edges of the canvas were also shaded with brown Distress crayons.

Stamping came next, I used a variety of script and mixed media stamps from my stash and stamped them onto the canvas with Black Soot Distress Archival ink.

I still felt I needed some interest on my background so spattered the canvas with white and then black thinned acrylic paint, masking off the lettering before doing so.  Here's a close up picture of the spattered and stamped background.

I then fussy cut some vintage peach and apple images from my stash (courtesy of Magic Moonlit Studio) and adhered some of them to the background.  I sealed the background images with Distress Matte collage medium and then used a Black Soot Distress marker to add some shading.

The two foreground images were mounted onto black fun foam and adhered over top to add a bit more dimension to my canvas.

I love the addition of the Perfect Pearls to the lettering, I must remember to use it more often!

Hope you have enjoyed my quick little tutorial, this is a great way to make use of those hoarded surplus die cut letters you have in your stash!

I also hope it has inspired you to join in our August challenge, I can't wait to see what you create.

Thanks again for stopping by today and happy creating!

Deb xo