Dare to Dream with Jelissa

Hello 13@rts friends! How has your month of July been? 

I'm in today to share a canvas which my husband has been bugging me to make for one of his major customers. Some time back, I was gifted a wonderful truckload of curtain materials and I made a canvas gift for a friend using those materials (you can read all about it here). The husband showed that canvas to the one of the directors of the curtain materials company and he loved it to bits. And of course, he casually remarked that such a piece would easily cost up to $200 in the market and let his words hang in the air. The hint was pretty obvious! 

Prior to this piece, I made one which I totally hated. Wrong color, wrong texture, wrong composition and I had let my failure sit there for almost a year. Until a recent conversation with some close friends did my husband bring up this again and I felt I had to deal with the idea of failed projects. So I grabbed a new blank canvas and started from scratch. 

Here is the finished product, which I'm a lot more pleased with:

The background was such a joy to create. Basically I had gesso as a primer and painted on 4 layers of Ayeeda matt paint - Lavender, Berry, Cobalt and White. Using a baby wipe, I slowly revealed the colors below in the places I wanted to and the effect was stunning. 

More details in the close-ups:

I mixed gesso with lots of Ayeeda Magic Powder till it gave a thick paste. I used most of that paste over a floral stencil from the Cozy Evening collection, and the remainder around the edges of my canvas. 30 minutes later, a beautiful cracking effect emerged. For the chandelier, I primed with gesso, followed by gel medium and a layer of distress glitter for texture. To enhance the shimmer, I painted randomly with silver glitter paint.

This was an unintended but gorgeous effect I got as a result of dry brushing the Ayeeda matt paint. My final coat was white and I had layered it thick on some parts. It wasn't obvious the day before, but when I took the photo the next day these cracks started showing up! 

The title piece which I colored with a mix of Vivid Violet paint and some iridescent medium, followed by a random layer of silver glitter paint. The flowers were white petals which I had painted with a mix of Pastel Lavender, Pearl Violet mists and Cobalt Blue matt paint, watered down to blend into each other. 

Keeping texture simple. I have three different curtain fabrics here - a cotton blue, and two soft mesh with gold embroidery (one Champagne and one gold-toned blue) under all my flowers. On top of the fabric, I have silver microbeads, gold strips and distress glitter sealed together with gel medium. Then I painted from the bottle with Violet Pearl mist. 

Layered doilies cut out from Mental Vacation papers, painted lightly with Lavender matt paint and highlighted with Old Gold metallic paint. 

13@rts products used:

Ayeeda Paint METALLIC! Old Gold, Ayeeda Paint - Vivid Violet, Ayeeda Paint - Matte Berry, Ayeeda Paint - Silver Glitter, Ayeeda Paint - Matte Cobalt, Ayeeda Paint - Matte Lavender, Ayeeda Paint - Matte White, Mist pastel - Pastel Lavender, Pearl Mist - Violet, Gesso - acrylic primer 120ml, Medium żelowe- Gel medium MATT, Modeling paste 120ml, MAGIC! Powder, Glitter gold - bars, Microspheres silver 

That's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by!

love,