Ice Birds

Having at last managed to set up a blog, I've made a little canvas with the themes of white and dangly bits for the Graphicus December Challenge. Whether I can work out how to link it will be another matter!

I started out with a 4x4 canvas and stamped a background pattern with gesso to get a bit of texture. I then used a baby wipe to apply white acrylic paint over the canvas. The background is completed by some patches of Ranger Rock Candy crackle paint with white rubbed in the cracks and a smear of Stickles for icy sparkle.

I stamped the birds onto Ten Seconds Studio metal using StaZon ink and went over the stamped lines with a teflon tipped tool to indent them. Then working from the back I embossed the bodies using a paper stump. I've added a little icy blue colour with sharpie pens and then swiped with white acrylic.

The stamps are from an Elusive Images Curly Birds plate, as is the bird cage which I stamped three times onto frosted shrink plastic using white Brilliance Ink. (I learned that direction matters when doing this. Images stamped across the plastic shrink in different proportion to those stamped lengthways, but you probably knew that!). I punched holes for threading before shrinking the plastic. The birdcages are threaded with beads onto nylon thread and hang from rings screwed into the bottom of the canvas.