I would like to share a creation I made for my friend Leesa. Leesa excels at random acts of kindness and I wanted to thank her for a special gift she made for me. Since she also is a beautiful quilter, I decide to do a mixed media piece that had a quilting/sewing theme. This is the result: Threads in the Magic Garden.
After my black gesso background had dried, I used stencils and modeling paste for texture. I just had to rip a side off of a piece of cardboard (which I had stitched around with yarn) and add it to the canvas along with a zipper, 'recycling' the inspiration from my first mixed media piece A R T. I should add a side note about the zippers I've been using. They were orange. I mean really orange from a really, really orange down, puffy vest. Yikes! I wore that many years ago. Why? I cant answer that and prefer not to dwell on it!
Next, I began adhering my embellishments: paper flowers that I had cut out of cardstock , thread, beads, gears, a bobbin, snaps, tiny scissors, etc. I embossed the butterflies and the word Magic and set those aside.
Acrylic paint and ink was applied next in garden greens and shades of blue and purple. I rubbed a tarnished gold pigment on the metal embellishments and the center of the flowers. Any guesses on what I made the flower centers from? Heads of Q-Tips!
The spool of thread, the embossed butterflies and the word Magic were added next. And my final touch was running string around the gears and through the sewing needle. One butterfly is 'sewing' and the other, snipping the threads. See? It's magic!