A few weeks ago I showed you the abstract watercolor painting on canvas that I had made.
I loved it because it was pretty and anyone can make it. It didn’t work for me because I’m artistic, because I’m not. (I’m crafty, there’s a difference.) I showed you step by step how I made it so that if you were inspired, you could make your own.
Even though I loved it as it was, I knew it was missing something.
I also wanted to give my hand at working with gold leaf so I decided to do a design using a stencil in gold paint and then go over it with gold leaf to make it pop.
I found the bird stencil, gold paint and the gold leaf all on the same aisle at Hobby Lobby so it must have been fate.
Here’s the truth to that night when I finished this – It had been a truly horrible day. Honestly it was one of those days that you question your ability to parent and run a household. Yes it was just hormones causing drama but it was truly a night that I just needed to sit down and get my hands covered in paint.
Nothing works better to give me quiet time to think than working on a project.
But since I needed that quiet time to just work with my hands while working through things in my mind, I didn’t take any pictures.
I started by taping the stencil down with painters tape to the spot where I wanted it to be. Then I painted over the stencil with metallic gold craft paint.
My original plan was to leave the stencil down and gold leaf on top of it and then remove the stencil. However I found that this tore off a lot of the gold leave from the edges.
So what worked best was to put a very thin layer of glue anywhere I wanted gold leaf using a small paintbrush. I would wait a minute and then apply gold leaf in a haphazard fashion, letting it go over the edges and out of the lines.
To finish I took a firmer paintbrush and just brushed the extra gold leaf right off the canvas. It only stuck where it had touched the glue and the rest was easily brushed away.
Now it’s done and I’m really happy with it. The gold leaf isn’t solid, you can still see a layer of metallic paint underneath it. It adds great dimension.
I also added a few really fine dots of gold paint around the twigs and branches just for fun.
So there you go… proof that you can make great art for your home without having any idea what you’re doing.
It started like this….
And now hangs on our walls looking like this…
There ya go… If I can do it so can you!
It’s time to get to work.
