Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A fun afternoon project!

If you've been searching for just the right gift for your mom or grandma this Mother's Day, I (Julie) thought I'd share an easy project that makes an artist out of anyone!

All you need is a unfinished wood frame (I bought mine for $1 at Michael's), your favorite stamp set (I picked up my Sweet Pea set ), StazOn ink, some acrylic paint, a fine and a fine line black permanent paint.

I started by giving my frame a white wash - which is just painting it with watered down white paint. After it dried, I stamped my Sweet Peas in each corner. With StazOn, you want to make sure that you clean your stamp right away! This is a solvent based ink. It's ok in short spurts, but leave the ink on your polymer stamp and over time, it could damage the polymer!

Here's a look so far!
And, here's a close up....
These are the colors of paint that I picked - two shades of green, two shades of pink and some white....(they are all "well loved" bottles of paint!)
Then, I started to paint with a fine tip paint brush, making sure to darken the areas I wanted shadows and lightening highlighted areas with dabs of white.
While the look above is "OK," I knew I wanted to see the definition in my flowers. So, I grabbed a permanent file line black pen and started to outline the stamped image - like this....
Now I was in a quandary because I thought it didn't look soft enough! So, I let the permanent black pen ink dry and then I took my white wash paint (watered down paint) and I took a foam sponge and sponged the white wash over my entire frame. When this was done, I took a large dry brush and dipped it a bit into ivory paint and added some antique streaks. Its a great way to get a hand painted look without being an artist!! :-)
When it was done it looked like this....
I just love that picture of my daughter and her Nana! So did my daughter! It now sits on the shelf in her room.

Hope you enjoyed this little project. Like I said - all you need is a fun stamp, some paint, a picture frame.... and an afternoon!

17 comments:

Cindy Haffner said...

Wow this is so gorgeous, what a great idea.

Anonymous said...

What a great project! I love the amount of detail that you got with the paint! The tip on going back over the image with a pen was just fantastic. Thanks for sharing this technique!

Yvonne Hagane said...

That is just beautiful!!! Great job!

StampinCathy said...

WoW! This is just beautiful and the gift is just priceless.

Anita said...

Beautiful project! TFS!

Evelyn S. said...

Just wonderful! I'm so glad I have those Sweet Peas....need to ink them up, I guess.

veronica said...

you did a beautiful job on the blooms. love it.

Stacy Morgan said...

Julie this is awesome, very creative and Nana will love this. hee hee :0)

Rose Curtis said...

So beautiful... I love it! thanks for the inspiration!

Elaine A said...

Funny, I was in Michael's early this week and picked up 2 of those frames. Had no idea what I was going to do with them, but at $1, how could I not get them? Now I know what I'm going to do - LOL. Thanks for the great tutorial.

Elaine Allen

Dee Jackson said...

Julie this is gorgeous!! The details are just wonderful!!

Anonymous said...

Holy Moly - this project is a knock-out. Thanks so much for sharing!

Laura (scrapnextras) said...

What an amazing project! Your painting is fabulous and the photo is precious! Such a beautiful keepsake!

Laurie said...

Such a wonderful keepsake for your daughter & your granddaughter, too. Thanks for the great idea, Julie!

Sewflake said...

What a super fabulous Mothers Day gift...........and I think I just threw away the wooden frames I had because they had been around for a few years... :-< My mother would have loved a picture of her and her great-grand kids..

Betty Wright said...

Julie, this is just wonderful!!! Your coloring is fantastic!!! The image with your mom and daughter is just sooo precious!!! Fabulous work!!!!

Shirley said...

Julie, this is too precious for words! Two beautiful ladies~