The last-minute mixed media canvas...

Text-message conversation with my mother two Fridays ago...

"Can you make an art piece for my colleague's house-warming lunch party on Sunday?"

"Huh? So last-minute? Dunno if I can finish in time. What size? Colour? Theme?"

"Just like the one you taught in class last week. I will get the photo for you."

"What? I don't repeat designs. And that took many many hours over a week...Oh well, I need a good quality photo."

Photo was finally emailed to me late Saturday afternoon....

Now, what do you do when you are crunched for time? You cheat, right? [I really mean, take a shortcut..really...*winks*]

So I distressed a 12x12 patterned paper and adhered to the base of a 12x12 canvas with matte gel. Then I painted the paper with a coat of clear gesso. Afterwhich, I lightened some areas of the paper with watered-down gesso.

After stamping [random text] the edges to add depth and map out my "visual triangle", I adhered mesh tape and applied Liquitex Sand Resin medium and Liquitex Blended Fibers mediums with The Crafter's Workshop stencils. When that dried, I added my first layer of colours with Faber Castell Gelatos.

You can see that the Liquitex Blended Fibers medium gives a very subtle texture [the random arcs] while the Liquitex Resin Sand medium [the area near the mesh tape] gives a more grainy texture. The glittered bits on the top right corner are mica flakes.

Then comes the fun and most time-consuming part...embellishing. I started embellishing this canvas on Saturday night...until I couldn't keep my eyes open [which was like 10pm...yeah, late nights are not my thing...*LOL*]...

Then I woke up at 5am to continue embellishing [okay, I woke up to watch South Park on cable...they show it at odd hours... *winks*]. And finally finished the canvas at 11.30am, took some photos and sent it off with my mother [okay, so I took time out to eat breakfast, worked out, did my laundry, vacuumed the floor before I completed the canvas...hey nothing like last-minute finishing touches, right? *LOL*].

There you have it....the story of my last-minute mixed media canvas. What do you think?

P/s: If you are interested in learning more about how I created depth and the textures on this mixed media canvas, please read this post on The Crafter's Workshop blog - How to create depth and textures.