A Little Inspiration...

I went out for breakfast and a stroll in South Pasadena on Saturday. I spent a few minutes in Zinnia a wonderful little crafts and more store on Mission st. Among the papers and doodads and art i found little packets of printed napkins.  I am a sucker for a kit of any kind - i just love the mix of patterns.  I bought 4 packets and took them home to play with.  I intermingled them with some from my own collection of bird and butterfly napkins.

While i was there i got to see these beautiful pieces of art in person - they were done by Tamara Tolkin the owner of the store.

I first saw these on Paul Murray's blog. Be sure to check out his wonderful artwork and photography. Paul teaches a decoupage class and has some amazing examples here and here.

So i decided i would like to try to make a decoupage canvas along the lines of Tamara's artwork above.

Here is the "before" - a nice thick 30" by 40" blank canvas.

I figured out the dimensions of the "squares" that would fill the background.  6" by 6 1/2" pieces of ephemera, book pages and wrapping paper in cream and black.  I needed 5 across and 6 down - 30 in total.

I watered down some matte gel medium to use as glue.It worked great - and made it last longer.

I did the border first then filled in the middle.

Here is the canvas completed - well just step one!

Next i cut the napkins into squares - along the fold lines - about 6". I tried to make a balance of colours and patterns - in a predominantly green and golden colour scheme.

Next i cut out circles.  I made a template - but i was not going for perfection!

Here are the squares -  "step 2"  - laid out on the background.  I spent a lot of time on this trying to achieve perfectly random looking organization!

Here they are glued down with gel matte medium.  I applied the glue to the base and used a foam brush roller to smooth them out.  too much glue and they can tear.

Next i laid out the circles on top of the coloured napkins - "step 3".

This is the effect i was hoping for - where the writing/words from "step one" would show through the napkins.

Here is the almost finished piece hanging on the wall. The last and final step will have to wait until it is fully dry.  I will be adding paint to highlight the circles and squares - rough borders, like in the inspiration works above from Tamara.


Stay tuned....!