June Guest - Lucy Edmondson - Jane Austen Canvas

For my second 'make' for my guest appearance, I have made a large canvas featuring mini canvases using the Jane Austen's Countryside stamps by the Artistic Outpost:-

I started off by painting the canvas, which was a bit smaller than A4 in size, with some vivid colours of acrylic paint in orange, pink, turquoise, and lime. I knew they would be 'muted' a little when I added the tissue, which was Tim Holtz tissue wrap in 'Terminology', which I applied using plenty of matte medium to adhere it, and over the top, so that it really soaked in. Now I know a lot of people at this stage would have added some gesso and maybe stamping or stencilling over the top of this layer, but I really loved the tissue wrap words showing through so clearly - the first time I have used this product and I love it! The great thing is, Happy Daze is the only place I have spotted where you can buy just a sheet of the tissue wrap if you don't want the outlay for a huge box, and this would be plenty for the whole project. I gave the mini canvases the same treatment and then stamped some of the Jane images onto shrink plastic, coloured them on the reverse with Pro Markers, and cut round the shapes carefully before shrinking them.

I rubbed a little Teal StazOn ink onto my finger (the only tool I can always find!), and ran it round the edge of the big canvas and the baby canvases for a bit of definition. I stamped the cameo from the stamp set onto white card and coloured it with Pro Markers and cut it to fit into one of these adorable little frames here, filled it with Glossy Accents, and let it dry overnight.

For the mini faux Jane Austen book, I stamped the pattern design from the stamp set onto Glassine paper using VersaMark and embossed it in gold, and scrunched it up in my hand. I folded the rectangle so it wasn't quite in half, then folded it not quite in half from the other end, to form a spine, and filled it with some pieces of book text to look like a book. The scrunching gave the glassine a slightly leathery 'book' feel. I then cut some faux book corners from some bigger metal embellishments and added them to the corners, with the Jane Austen wording from the stamp set.

To assemble the canvas, I splodged some white paint onto the middle of four of the mini canvases using my finger, so the images would stand out better, and adhered the three shrink plastic images, and the little cameo frame. I used glossy accents to add a couple of little pieces of ball chain to the frame to look like a necklace. I stamped the quote, 'To sit in the shade on a fine day is the most perfect refreshment' onto white card in black ink, and matted it onto a piece of glassine embossed with the pattern as before. I adhered this, and the faux book, to the final canvases, and grouped them together towards the centre of the large canvas.

To finish off, I added the metal photo corners you can find here.