Lockdown Project

Hi Antony here!

I hope everyone is keeping safe in these uncertain times. Stress levels for many

of us are at an all time high and for some boredom has set in... but wait, there is hope

...Crafting! During all these lockdowns, lots of people have discovered crafting for

the very first time. With lots of new Facebook groups popping up, there is plenty of

inspiration out there and these new crafters are finding how calming and fun crafting

can be... and now they're hooked! For those of us who already craft, we've had a

chance of trying different styles to our normal crafting, or even different types of crafts

that we've never tried before. For quite a few people they've also taken the plunge and

started to do Crafting Facebook Lives and sharing their ideas.

This post is about one of my lockdown projects, which is a very different

style for me. I was inspired a bit by Finnabair, but wanted to add my own twist too!

I don't usually name my canvases, but this one I've called

"The Angel of Hope"

Step 1 To start off with I cut myself some MDF, which was left over from my garage

craft room conversion. This formed the canvas. I painted this with white gesso.

Step 2 Once the gesso was dry I glued a pre-printed rice paper design on top. Then

I watered down some white acrylic paint and splattered it over the rice paper to give

it a distressed look. This using a stencil and some Prima texture paste I added some

extra detail. 

Step 3 I mixed a colour similar to the pre-printed rice paper design and went round

the outer edge of the canvas to form a sort of border.

Step 4 Using a clock face die, I cut out 2 clock faces on 1mm card and then

stuck them both together to create the main background embellishment.

I painted this white and added some texture to it using quick drying Polyfilla.

Step 5 For all of the other 3D embellishments I used a selection of Prima Marketing

moulds. Usually I'd have used air drying clay, but this time round I used some quick

setting resin. When all the casts were dry, I painted them with white gesso.

The only ones I didn't paint were the two wings that I would later place on top

of the angel.

I used 2mm card to cut out a circle that would be large enough to later glue the

angel on. Again I used Polyfilla to add some texture. I also cut some 2mm

card into strips and applied a bit of texture to them too.

Step 6 For the wings that are on top of the angel, I heated the resin casts, so that I

could slightly bend them, to give them some shape. When you use this technique

make sure you don't apply too much pressure to the casts, as you might leave

a few fingerprints. Once the casts had cooled down, I painted them with white

gesso. Once dry I painted the angel and the wings with Prima, gold coloured

metallic paint. I then used a slightly darker paint to dry brush on, which helped

bring out some of the casts amazing detail. Finally using some magenta

gilding wax I lightly went over the angel and wings, to help give them a sort

of vintage/aged look and also to add a bit of warmth to their overall colouring.

Step 7 For all the other resin casts, I painted them with various colours of

metallic paints and waxes. For the floral elements I picked out the colours

of both the flowers and the leaves. Once all the paint had dried, I them

used the same colour gold as I had used on the angel to lightly dry brush over

them. This helped tie everything together a little more.

Step 8 The final part was to position everything. Firstly I decided where I wanted

the angel to go and then positioned the clock. I then played round with positioning

the other casts until I was happy. When everything was in a good position, I

took a photo of it, before removing everything. Using 3D Gloss Gel medium,

I glued everything back in to position, using the photo I'd taken as reference. To fill

in gaps and to add more texture to my canvas, I used various size art balls along

with gel medium. Once dry I painted over these with white gesso and then

dry brushed with other colours to bring the whole canvas together.

Hope you've enjoyed this post, thanks for reading!

Until next time, Happy Crafting and please stay safe!

Antony