Autumn Trees, Pop Can Cold Enamelling

This picture evolved from my desire to test out the Crafters Companion mixed media dies.....more on that later...i am very very pleased with the results and have ideas flooding the grey matter like there's no tomorrow......which is weird cause my current reading matter of choice is Zombie apocalypse stuff.....

Ingredients

  MountBoard

  Acrylic Paints...i Favour System 3...Colours used = Cobalt Blue, White, Mars Black, Paynes Grey, Raw Umber, Pale Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Light Green, Deep Green and Pthalo Green.

* Cold Enamelling Starter Kit

* Crafters Companion Die'Sire Mixed Media Die Branch and leaves

  Pop Cans

* Spectrum Noir Alcohol Pens

* Imaginations Crafts Sparkle Medium = Peppermint, Hunters Green and Lapis Blue

* Imaginations Crafts Stencil = Dragonflies

* Collal 3D Glue

* Collal All Purpose Glue

* Double sided tape

  XCut Dies from a set that included an build a fox, leaves and an acorn....fab and im sure Hochanda will be bringing such to us in the future

* = Items purchased from Hochanda

How To

Background First....i sketched from the madness that is my head but you could use a picture just as easily and trace it onto your chosen peice of mountboard....The mountboard i used was a peice of scrap and i set the picture margins using the width of a ruler.  Once the sketch was laid in i painted the background with acrylic paints.....steps below

With the Back Ground Finished i Used my Mixed media dies from Crafters Companion to cut branches and leaves from pop cans....the branches will become trees. Some thoughts on the Crafters Companion Mixed Media Dies....well they cut alot of materials, they also chewed up my clear plates and the branch is now bent.....but they do cut probably a bit to well as when i tried mountboard i ended up with the pokey holes embossed as well.....but i cant dismiss them completely as they did cut..i think they need work....anyway...onwards

Once cut i coloured with spectrum Noir Alcohol pens

Then each leaf and Branch was cold enamelled with clear enamel....i wasnt happy with the leaves so each set was dusted with the relevant enamel colour to boost them a little... A Note here... the branches are flimsy and the enamel cracks and falls off because of this....be gentle

This is the fun bit, Starting left with the brown leaf trees and working as per pics i fixed each tree to the painting.

Closeup

 Wasnt satisfied and wanted to add more so i found my imagination Crafts Dragonfly Stencil and my sparkle Mediums and had a little play

Because i had smudges some of my stencil work i needed a few 'Butterflies' to cover the mistake....in this instance i used my Xcut Toadstool Dies to cut out a pop can and cold enamelled the cuts to make Fly Agaric Toadstools (My Fave) 

Before adding my little 'shrooms i mounted the picture...i chose a grey mount to push all the colours in the picture forwards...i toyed with blue which would have emphasised the sky and river in the background but decided against it as i wanted the foreground to be the focus....Grey it was

The Finishing touch is the little 'shrooms......and i am dead chuffed with the results...i hope you enjoy this 'How to' and look forward to seeing your ideas