I was inspired by this passage of scripture that I was in the middle of studying. I painted a canvas in my favorite shades of aqua and white.  Slapped the paint on randomly, quickly.  Then I ripped pages out of a mid-nineteenth century bible that is falling apart and adhered them to the canvas with mod-podge.  I distressed-inked all four edges of the canvas.  I had two pheasant feathers I attached with rusty wire, added some paper flowers and birds and a couple of 3-d flowers. Then I printed out this scripture of Matthew, cut it up, distressed it and applied it to the canvas-and after that I applied mod-podge to the whole thing.  I usually don’t do that-the mod podge layer on top, but I didn’t feel like letting loose of the paint brush quite yet!  I LOVE this piece of aqua, whites, ivory, yellow and brown and the feathers are just the natural element this canvas needed.

Canvas, paint, ephemera, stamps, ink and stickers

Feel free to copy and paste these for your own use.  I love the lithograph colors and the fonts of antique postcards.  Thanks to the GraphicsFairy for these!

This is created with paint, paper and a 3 dimensional raised paste bird on canvas with a real feather.  The canvas has watered down paint on it with areas of almost no paint at all.  I ripped pieces of antique religion book papers in the shapes of leaves and distressed their edges.  It is a small canvas, directly in my view when I am working in my studio…

Here it is completed…I was inspired by the colors of Fall.  This scripture was too big and I was running out of room, so I wrote the whole thing out alongside part of the tree… 

This is a work in progress…same deal -start with a canvas and begin using your favorite paints and just brushing those colors on-without too much thought. This canvas was actually used for something else originally, and I left some of the paper elements on it-painted right over them to give it some interest! I then began my tree by cutting long random narrow strips-again don’t think about it too much, just go for it.  I wanted them to look antiqued so I used distressing ink on them.  The paper roses are strips of paper rolled up and hot glued.  To adhere elements to a painted canvas you need to use an industrial epoxy if possible…or even punch holes in the canvas and wire them on.