Gelato Canvas and Wendy Vecchi products

Well it is official. Andiepants is becoming a southern bell!!! We will be moving to the lovely state of Louisiana very soon!

With all of our friends and family up here in Michigan it is very difficult to say goodbye, so one of the things that I like to do is to leave a little something with my friends and family as a token of my love. 

My friend from church, Delores, had a bit of spell and is currently in a rehabilitation facility re-learning how to use her arm. She misses her friends and her church very much. She is such an inspiration to me. Back in her hay-day she rode through the entire continental U.S. on the back of a Harley, all except for Alaska. As a hobby she paints these GORGEOUS china pieces and alters children's bouncy horses into carousel horses.

So for Delores I decided to make her a canvas. Something she could hang on her wall

This is actually a canvas I began a long time ago with the background stamping. It was just sitting in my cubby waiting for the right moment. So I doused it with water and used my gelatos, blending with my fingers.

I started with just blues and then decided it made a pretty sky and I wanted a scene of some sort.

Next I covered all the edges with Tea Dye distress ink. I used my finger to smudge in and over the white areas to give it an antique look.

Then I bust out my Wendy Vecchi crackle paste. This stuff ROCKS!!!

I used the crackle to make the "clouds" of my scene.

I forgot to take pictures of the next step. For this part I sprayed some water on my craft mat and added some drops from a Distress Stain re-inker in Antique linen. Then I used this wash to cover the entire canvas. This helped the gelatos to blend better and highlighted the cracks in my crackle clouds while giving the whole thing an antique appearance.

Then I bust out my stamp it stencil it by Wendy Vecchi. I used her archival inks to color it in  and went back over the base of the stem with gelatos to help highlight the grass. I ADORE how this turned out. I went with red in honor of Donna Downey. I love her:)

I then used gesso and water to create a water white paint and flicked the paint onto the bottom of the canvas to mimic flowers growing in the grass. 

Using my Tim Holtz layering stencils, I took a phrase from some Stampers Anonymous stamps and I added my title with a smudge stick and black gelato 

and voila...

My parting gift is complete. I  hope it inspires her as much and she has inspired me.

Til next time...

{{hugs}}

Andiepants

Wendy Vecchi's new groupies

Happy mother's day ePers!!!
A couple of items to share with you today!

This month's "theme" at eP is stencils.
Since I have shown you stenciling on tags www.scrappygoddess.blogspot.com I will now show you some stenciling on a scrapbook page. This is actually a mask...which is the reverse of a stencil...but same idea. I made this page for a Swirlydoos.com challenge called all about me. Yes, that's me.

In case you are dying for those fabulous butterflies or that gorgeous bird you can find them in the eP store here. And that adorable little fluffy pink flower is from the Cartographer line...here. The large piece of background paper is also from the cartographer line. The lines that resemble stitching are just Distress Markers and the inking over the mask/stencil is done in Frayed burlap distress ink. I love the ghostly image...it's so soft and blends right into the background.

I'd also like to share with you this FANTASTIC product in our store.
see...
This weekend I got to meet Wendy Vecchi in person. My daughter is officially now a groupie. (Don't you love how I placed blame). Seriously...she was snuggled right up to Wendy and was enthralled with Wendy's work. *Can't say I blame her there.* 

So while we were there, Wendy demonstrated her Stamp it Stencil It products. I had seen these in the eP store but with not knowing...I'll say it...I was a little nervous.

I now have 2 more on order.

But I'm jumping ahead.

If you have not used this product before...WOW!! So great! Here's a little preview of what you can do with this product

First you stamp with a solvent based ink like Stazon or Archival ink.

Then you layer the stencil over the image and color using either the same type, or a water based ink. The water based ink won't react with the solvent ink so your image stays nice and bright.

A little blue painters tape helps to hold everything in place. 

You can see because mine is two stamps I had to stamp 2 images and therefore got some overlap. 

To prevent that you have 2 choices. 

1) Before you get to this point, stamp the flower, then cut out another flower to use as a mask and stamp the branch

or 

2) Cut and color another image to lay over the flower to give it some dimension. 

I chose to go with the 2nd option so I stamped with my Stazon on an old Prima package and colored with the stencil in the same way...

Fussy cut out your second flower and adhere over your image with foam tape or pop dots. I placed mine slightly off center to accentuate the layered effect.

This is so much fun! Since I just got it yesterday I really didn't have time to play much with it but I can't wait to use it on cards, and layouts, and tags, and OTP projects...I have to say the sky is the limit.

I hope you dive in and give these wonderful stencils a try.

Til next time

{{hugs}}
Andiepants