Wings Collage

Project by Nina Owens from Prosper, Texas.

Nina comes from a long line of crafters and jumped at the chance of taking art classes throughout school. This project includes polymer clay cane butterfly wings, stamping on glass, and plastic disks with metal letter embellishments.

Materials:

9" x 12" Fredrix artist canvas panel board
K & Company butterfly paper
Black Ink handmade lace paper
Golden or Liquitex matte gel medium
printed napkins
Premo polymer clay
clay-dedicated pasta machine
clay-dedicated toaster oven
tissue blade
Click-its art glass pieces
Rubber Stampede, Stamps Happen butterfly stamps
Tsukineko black StazOn ink pad
Charkpak buttefly and dragonfly rub-ons
Collage Keepsakes by Hirschberg round metal letter tags
Making Memories mini brads
E6000 adhesive
large flat paint brush
plastic or wooden disks
metal bee embellishment
Marvy Uchida heat gun (optional)
aluminum foil
baking sheet

Steps:

1. Spritz canvas board with water. Apply a wash of fluid acrylic paint using large flat brush. Blot here and there. Allow to dry.

2. Decide placement of main components. Tear papers to size.

3. Brush gel medium (matte heavy or regular) on canvas. Apply paper elements beginning with the largest background pieces. Place each item on wet gel medium and brush over top with gel medium to secure, decoupage-style. Layer handmade paper pieces on and brush with gel medium.

4. Peel apart layers of napkin and tear to size. Brush gel medium on collage and place napkin piece on collage. Carefully smooth with brush loaded with gel medium. Be careful not to overbrush or brush too hard, or you will tear the napkin.

5. Pick up a touch of fluid acrylic on brush loaded with gel medium to glaze areas of collage (use translucent and transparent colors, not opaques). Let dry. When canvas is dry, apply purchased rub-ons if desired according to package instructions.

6. Use StazOn ink to stamp images onto glass and plastic disk.

7. Slice butterfly wings from polymer clay cane using tissue blade. Form snake shape for body. Place on sheet to bake and loosely cover with foil. Bake according to manufacturer's directions. Place brads through holes in purchased letters to spell WINGS.

8. Brush fluid acrylics on metal bee embellishment to tone down. Apply all embellishments to collage with E6000.

Website: www.ninaoriginals.com