My First (mini) Canvas

I don't know why, but I find creating on a canvas more than a little intimidating. Perhaps because it is a bit more permanent than a piece of paper. A piece of paper you can scrunch up and throw away, which is not so easy to do with a sturdy canvas. So I feel pressured to create something lasting and worthy of displaying on the wall. This pressure sometimes disables my creativity completely.

Luckily, I already had a small, flat canvas board ruined with a failed attempt at acrylic painting a few months ago (before I became interested in mixed media) which I have only just found lying at the bottom of my stash. Since it was already destined for the bin, I had nothing to lose, so I gave myself free reign to ruin it all over again if I wanted to. Yay!

I started by covering up the canvas with torn pieces of three different gelli prints. Then I cut random circles out of book pages and stuck them down with gel medium. When it was dry I gessoed over the circles just using my fingers and outlined the circles with a black pen. I also doodled around the circles of my gelli prints with a white pen. At this point I was stuck. I kind of liked the look but I didn't know how to proceed. Then I remembered that I had some rubber postage stamps lying around somewhere, approximately the same size as my circles. Bingo, that worked quite well! I still had a small problem with the focal point.

Having made no plans at all, I had no idea what the title or the focal point of my creation would be. I knew the focal point should be the largest circle but I wasn't sure what to put in it. I rummaged through my stash and I've found a sheet of printed tissue paper by DoCrafts and I really liked the image of the dragonfly, so I pasted it in the circle. The good thing about tissue paper is that it becomes transparent, allowing the background to show through. Another option would have been to do an image transfer, but I was too eager to move on and I didn't have the patience to experiment with an image transfer. The title 'Mail Art' came with the set of stamps and I used it in lack of a better idea, but I still quite like how it looks in the overall composition.

I'm thinking of doing a few more similar canvas designs and when I have five or so I can hang them one below the other, connected with a ribbon(?), for wall decoration. For now I'll just "admire" my first creation and gather the courage and inspiration to make some more!

By the way, the canvas used in this project originally came from the Works. It measures 5" X 7". A pack of 6 only costs £1.99. I think that's a really good deal at 33p per canvas. I must buy some more next time I go. The Works also sells these in bulk: 12X6= 72 canvas boards for just £16.99.  That's less than 24p per canvas! I find that unbelievably good value!

Canvas board 

Close up of canvas board - oops, it looks like I clipped the dragonfly's wings! Oh, well.