Mixed media experiment

When I don't know how to classify something, I guess I will label it mixed media. In this case, it is definitely an experiment, but it was also fun.

It began with a 6" x 6" canvas. I had Ranger alcohol inks from a Christmas bulb project a few years ago. I dripped inks on the canvas. Okay....this was interesting....  

I had rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle to spritz on top of these colors. Uh-oh....that went too far and got muddy.

I blotted off a lot of the still wet color. I should have saved the paper towel as that was pretty.  This was getting better, but I wanted more blooms of white from the alcohol spray. 

Ahh...getting closer, even though I still had no idea what I was going to do with this. 

Time to call the background done. I let it dry overnight to contemplate what I would do next. 

I used the flower from this Stampendous set (Cling Blossom Beauty - CRS7004) on scrapbooking paper that had words on it in faint print.

I wasn't going for realism, so I matched not one but all of the colors from the background, using Copic Markers to color the flowers. The print shows through somewhat, which is what I wanted. I fussy cut two flowers and discovered that I matched colors so well, the flowers were lost on the background.

I've been working on a lot of Halloween themed projects lately so black paper scraps were at hand. I liked black better than white behind the flowers. I used Mod Podge to adhere the flowers to black paper, then torn the black around the blossoms for a soft, tattered edge. 

After choosing their positions, I needed to fill in some space. I used a Copic Multi-liner pen to add the words Happy and Joy on one side, Charlene and Create on the other. I used Mod Podge to adhere the blossoms to the canvas, then covered everything with more Mod Podge. The pen ran a bit. Look at the R in "create".

For no reason in particular, I decided to add some glitter to the still wet Mod Podge. The first glitter was tinted and had fine rectangular shapes to the mix but that didn't really show. I attempted to add fine glitter by fingertip. My advice....don't do that. Adding candy sprinkles to a cake might work that way but glitter is too fine to control by fingertip. The colored pearl embellishments were on my desk and since the colors matched, they were added too. 

I painted the sides of the canvas with black acrylic paint. This is the finished whatever. 

I don't know that this will hang anywhere in my house, but it will be propped in the craft room to remind me to experiment and that stepping out of my comfort zone can be fun.