Rebekah's Birthday Bash Blog Hop!

Hello and welcome to my blog!  My name is Tessa and if you are following along, you should have just come from Audrey Yeager's blog.  What an amazing weekend!  Wow, the talent of all these artists is just amazing and I am definitely inspired.

For my little stop on the hop I wanted to share an altered canvas that I created:

I am a youth leader for my church, and "be strong and of a good courage" is our theme for 2010.  This visual reminder helps me keep my goals in sight and things in perspective :). 

♥ First, I primed my canvas with gesso.  Next, I dry-brushed pink acrylic paint perpendicular to the strokes I used for the gesso (just for a little added texture).  I then sprayed whitewash over the canvas, and using a bristly brush, I evened it out. 

♥ I punched butterflies from vintage French poetry book pages, adhered them to the canvas, then repeated the paint and whitewash. 

♥ Next, I used some Tim Holtz crackle paint to detail the edges of the canvas, and when dried, highlighted the cracks with pink chalk. 

♥ I stamped my sentiment with jet black Stazon ink and dry-brushed a little more paint over the words. 

♥ For my flowers, I dyed some cream colored Prima roses with vintage pink Glimmer Mist.  I also made fabric flowers from strips of a vintage-inspired print and found a vintage-inspired cabachon.  The cream, five-petal flowers have been in my stash for a long time, pulled from a bouquet of silk flowers that was beyond its prime.  Little pearl centers brightened them up :).  The velvet leaves are by Prima (I cannot own enough of these!).  I added the flowers with simple hot glue.

♥ To add more dimension to the top portion of the canvas, I punched more butterflies and added them to cardstock to make them more stiff.  I used dimensional adhesive to pop them off the canvas.

♥ I used my last treasured piece of this ribbon (I think it's by Maya Road) to hang the canvas, stapling it to the back with my handy-dandy super stapler.

It's really feminine, and since I am the only girl in my family, this will definitely have to hang in my studio.  But that's just fine by me :).  Happy Birthday, Rebekah!  Rebekah will be receiving a little birthday present from my Etsy shop, Precocious Paper.  One of you lovely hoppers will be winning a pair of their choice of flowers, too!  If you give an altered canvas a go, I would love to see it.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Now off to the talented Anna White-Sharman's blog :).  Happy scrapping, Tessa