Sunday 20 August 2017

13arts guest designer

Ah, my poor neglected blog! I have not one but two projects to share that I created for 13arts. My July project can be seen here with a full product list. The His & Hers paper range has some beautiful feather designs on it and they always make me think of wings, so that's exactly what I made with them!
 For my August project, I wanted to make something a little different. I had an old Christmas decoration lantern that I got super cheap in the sales so I decided to give it a new lease of life as a galaxy lantern.


 I removed the glass panels from the frame and put them to the side. I primed the frame with black gesso, and then roughly mixed together metallic bronze paintExpresso paint and clear Crackle glaze and painted the frame with the mixture. Once it was dry, I added some drops of Turquoise mist to chalk-finish medium to give a very matte mixture and used this to highlight the cracks and to give a faded look. I then dry brushed white gesso over the frame to highlight some areas. Now for the galaxy look!


  Because I wanted the outside of the glass to remain smooth, I had to paint the galaxy effect in reverse. First, white gesso was splattered over the glass to create the look of stars and once this was dry, I added swirls and areas of Gold Glitter paint to create the effect of constellations. Then I poured some acrylic liquid medium into a spray bottle and covered the glass in it to seal the layers so far and create a little dimension. (This stuff is amazing! So versatile and so many things you can do with it!)


Next I took my turquoise mist, dirty pink mist and Vivid violet paint and used a paintbrush to create areas of colour around the glitter; blend the colours together, leave areas where the colour pools, let the colours dry and then apply further coats to create areas of light and more intense colour- basically just play about until you are happy with the effect! I took my spray bottle of liquid medium again, but this time applied a very, very thin layer of the medium as too much can cause the mists to run, so I did multiple thin layers to seal the colours.

 Now to finish the galaxy effect. Over the areas of colour I painted a very light layer of white gesso and over the rest of the glass I painted a thicker layer of black gesso (the reason why will soon become clear!), and when this was dry I put the glass panels back into the lantern.

This is the finished lantern, with a shabby, vintage-effect frame and beautiful galaxy panels, which looks pretty enough. But, if you place a candle or light source inside the lantern and dim the lights a little........




........ the areas of white gesso allow the light to shine through the glass and create a lovely illuminated galaxy effect!








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