Scrap Escape: Flying Unicorns Small Art Big passion Canvas

Welcome to the Small Art Big Passion

I'm here today to show off the Small Art Big Passion mini-kit. It's my favorite kit bundle each month. It's all about the love of making cards, tags atc's and anything in between. From Stamps, flowers, paper, embellishments and pretty things in between! These yummy goodies will enhance any of the kits or stand alone . There are so many options for this mini kit, so I created a small 6x6 canvas.

This month's paper collection included in the Small Art Big Passion is the BoBunny Juliet collection.

This collection has rich warm tones, perfect for the season.

I'm going to walk you through my steps for this project. Lots of time, projects look far more complex than they really are , so breaking the projects into steps is very helpful.

Here are some close ups of the canvas before I dive into my step-by-step.

So let's see how I made this

As I said earlier, I am creating a 6x6 canvas board.

I grabbed the Prima 6x6 stencil - Doily 1 from the Unicorn store and slathered on the heavy gesso. I prefer to use heavy gesso for stenciling over molding paste for the simple reason that the heavy gesso tends to stay white. I have found that molding paste can pick up/absorb the colors from the paper or canvas. When I want white, I Like my mediums to stay white.

Note: if you want to use molding paste for stenciling and would like the medium to stay white, just add some white acrylic paint or regular white gesso and mix it into the molding paste. You can add other colored acrylics to the gesso as well for other projects.

After the heavy gesso has completely dried, I cut the stenciled design out - sort of like a wreath. It's so pretty, isn't it?

I am a big fan of inked edges, and this project is not going to escape without some edge inking. I also ran my ink pad lightly over the top of the dry stenciled design to give the top of the stencil some light definition.

At this point, I glued the doily onto some cardboard and cut it out as well. I want some dimension to the canvas.

Set the doily aside -time to start the canvas background. I glued a piece of the BoBunny Juliet paper to the canvas using Soft Matte Gel. I applied a layer of soft matte gel to the canvas using a sponge brush - made sure it was bubble and ripple free, then added a layer of soft matte gel over the top.

Ahhhhhh so why did I use Soft Matte Gel medium instead of glue? Great question. I prefer using the matte gel medium to adhere my paper to canvas because I feel it provides a smoother surface - less bubbling , less ripples, less curling of the edges on the paper. The project ends up looking polished and professional and nicely finished.

Glue does work great - don't get me wrong, but we all have preferences.

Once nicely dried, I inked the edges and some random accent spots.

Next I need to work on the Julie Nutting wood doll shape. They are very sweet shapes and have beautiful natural wood finishes so you don't really even need to paint or color the dolls. I gave mine a blush of color with Prima watercolor pencils and chalk edgers.

First, let's talk about the the watercolor pencils. Watercolor pencils are very pigmented so a little goes a long way, meaning color a bit and and then blend with the water brush. You can always add more color is you want, to enhance. The waterbrush does all the work in activating the pigment from the pencil.

Next I colored the doll's hair and shoes by dipping the tip of the waterbrush into the Prima Chalk Edgers by Ingvild Bolme. It's a great way to add some color and to control the amount of color you add.

Time to decorate and finish up the canvas.

I decorated with flowers, and Flying Unicorn metal adornments and the wood embellishments that came with the wood doll. These are goodies that came in the Small Art Big Passion

After the canvas has been decorated as desired, I added a finishing touch - using thin gold braiding ( from my stash) around the inside of the doily.