Mixing it with Metal

Hello and welcome to today's Inspirational Post. It's Sue here and today I'm sharing a revamp of an old project where I've indulged my passion for working with metal. Ever since I was introduced to metal in my art many years ago at an Artsycrafts weekend, that PaperArtsy used to arrange, I've been hooked. I love the dimension and texture that metal gives your projects and coupled with Fresco Finish paints I'm in heaven ! So today is all about my indulgence, so I apologise upfront !

 This is what the project looked like before I started work. First thing to do was to take off all of the embellishments and then sand it all over.

I originally was going to sand the stencilled Grunge Paste off but I do have a soft spot for swirls and flourishes so decided to keep them. 

 I have some sheets of Ten Seconds Studio metal, which is running out fast, and used some moulds to create different textured pieces. I placed them on the mirror to start the thought process going. 

 I grabbed a few Fresco Finish paints and added some satin glaze and using my finger blended the colours all over the wood.

 After finalising the metal layout it was all stuck down with extra strong double sided sticky sheets.

 To tie the metal into the colour scheme I used Brown Shed Fresco Finish over the metal and wiped it off before it dried.

 I also used Dusty Teal and some Little Black Dress to distress the metal some more. Now I needed to decide whether to keep the mirror in the centre or do something else.....

 I wanted to fill the niche so started by painting the mirror with Little Black Dress Fresco Finish paint. 

 I'd been watching some videos by Nancy Crawford on Encaustic Art so thought a small piece in the centre might be the way to go. I didn't have the right size of Stamp Bord so glued together the smaller square pieces then gave it 3 layers of encaustic medium.

I stamped the leaf from one of Lin Brown's new stamp sets onto tissue paper then fused it onto the board.

 I was originally going to try and do 3 vertical black lines on the right hand side of the board but things went slightly wrong ! So, I used masking tape then rubbed gold leaf over the wax rubbing with my finger so the leaf sticks to the wax.

 This is the finished piece, I think ! The colours didn't come out how I wanted them so I may need to work on it some more but for the moment I like it. 

One final shot to show the texture of the metal and how the encaustic piece sits in the centre.

I hope you've enjoyed today's Inspirational Post, no birds today but hopefully lots of inspiration !

Sue
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