Holly Mixed Media Silhouette

Today I have had a chance to do something that I have been wanting to try for some time now. The best bit was that I was able to do this piece revolving around my 2 year old daughter Holly. I wanted to create a mixed media piece along the lines of that which Finnabair does. And I also wanted to center it around some of her favourite things. As a typical little girl she loves all things fairies, princesses, butterflies, and flowers etc.

My perfect opportunity presented itself in the form of the 'Scrap Around The World' October Challenge. You can access their blog here at Scrap Around The World and the October inspiration board was:

The board was filled with the colours that Holly loves. The blues, purples, pinks and a few shades of teal. It also had her precious butterflies, which made it even more perfect.

So here's what I came up with:

I began with a 12" square canvas that I stencilled on some background detailing with modelling paste.

 Then came another stencil, some more modelling paste, and some glimmer mist sprays.

More spritzing and spraying

Then I added some chipboard pieces to spell her name and used gesso to stick these to the canvas. I then applied gesso over the top of the letters so that they too could be sprayed.

Next came the FUN bit. I got Holly to lie down on the floor for me and I slipped a piece of paper under her head. I then drew around her profile (like you do as a kid with your hands) and got her silhouette. This was then copied onto a piece of black card and cut out. This was glued to the canvas and I used a matt medium gel to do this.

I did stick this piece of ribbon under where her pony tail started, but later cut it off as it was not quite the look I wanted. I wanted to keep her face area free and then cover her hair with embellishments. I started by gathering anything and everything I thought that I might be able to use, and laid these out. I then started by placing some of the bigger metal/chipboard embellishments out.

These were glued down with the matt gel. More embellishments were chosen, laid out and then pasted down. This continued until I was happy with the coverage over the area. To achieve this I also used paper flowers.

When I was happy with the coverage and all of the pieces were securely glued down, I applied several layers of gesso over the top of everything.

Then the colouring fun began again with some more spritzing and spraying, until I was happy with the colour combinations. I have used black acrylic paint to paint over the black card face area. Here is the finished result.

 

And another view.

 

 

I think I will go back tomorrow and add some shadowing around the letters and the hair embellishments, to make them POP just that little bit more.

I hope you enjoyed this, and I'll be back again soon showing some more from my craft room.