Creating with Finnabair

Those of us who live in the northeast had quite a winter to deal with this year...In total, I believe we received over five feet of snow...in about three weeks time!  It was crazy!  At the beginning of those storms, our entire family came down with the flu.  This meant that we didn't leave the house, except one painful grocery store trip, in two weeks.  That left me with not only a lot of time to watch every movie we own, but I also had a lot of time to craft.

I spent one weekend looking through Finnabair's blog, somehow managing to never have done so until a few months ago.  I'm so in awe of her projects and one of them, utilizing black gesso and Inka Gold, really inspired me.

One of the things I think is so much fun is how Finnabair takes all of these different objects, all different colors and textures, and layers them on a canvas.  Then, just using gesso, she creates almost another blank canvas where you can add your color.

I started by applying a layer of Wendy Vecchi's crackle paste to a canvas board.  Once that layer was dry I added black gesso.  I didn't cover the entire canvas, just the area behind all of my embellies, because my plan was to add another layer of gesso over the entire piece once I was done gluing.  This just meant that I wouldn't have to struggle to get gesso into all of the nooks and crannies.  All of the items on my canvas were just random pieces I had laying around my studio...lots of left overs!

I used a hot glue gun to adhere all of the parts as I needed to make sure the pieces wouldn't fall off when I added the gesso.  Next...a good, heavy layer of black gesso went over every single inch of the canvas and baubles.  Covering the flowers and canvas takes some time and patience and may need more than one coat of gesso.

Once the gesso was dry, all I had to do was add a few shades of Inka Gold (this stuff is the bomb!).  I used a dry brush to apply the Inka Gold to the embellishments.  I didn't add much to the background, focusing mostly on the all of the textures.  

I'm giddy over those block letters from Tim Holtz...I also added a photo of my two munchkins to the inside of the metal flower.  (Most of these metal pieces are from Prima)  And here's the finished canvas...

(Check out all of that juicy crackling in the background...oh man, I love it!)  This was a super fun project, although a little time consuming as you need to wait for each layer to dry, but just perfect for a winter snowstorm.  I think I'll start saving up pieces for next winter...

Enjoy!