Southern Girls Challenge - Winged Things

For this month's challenge over at Southern Girls Challenge the theme is wings and things. I have created a canvas featuring an art doll and a lot of diecuts.  I love using diecuts and I love finding other ways to use them apart from card making and scrapbooking.  Here is the finished piece, it is a 10"x10" canvas.

To make the background I first crumpled up tissue paper and glued it to the canvas, When I die cut with my more intricate dies I usually use a piece of waxed paper between the die and the material I am cutting.  I hate wasting materials so I keep all of the die cut waxed paper pieces. On this project I used a Cheery Lynn Web border die and using the waxed paper pieces I glued these around the edge of the canvas. The beauty of using the waxed paper is that it resists the paints and sprays and gives a nice effect on the background. I then diecut several butterflies out of scrap card using a Cheery Lynn die.  I glued these diecut butterflies to the canvas.  I then painted over the butterflies with white gesso.

Once the gesso had dried I began spraying the canvas with various sprays.  I kept going until I got the depth of colour that I was happy with, using a baby wipe to wipe off the paint and spray on the areas where I had put the waxed paper.  You can see the effect this creates in the image below.   When the paint dried I dry brushed the raised areas with gold and then using a wet brush I highlighted areas and brushed on Perfect Pearls.  I sprayed the finished result with a fixative spray to hold the Perfect Pearls.  This gave me a shimmering background for my canvas.

I then set about creating the art doll.  Her body is made from card which I covered with a paper towel that had been used to clean up paint.  I glued waxed paper butterflies to the paper towel and then glued the paper towel to the card.  I just cut the body freehand, then I attached it to an ice cream stick that I had stamped with a script stamp.  I stamped the head and then used a Memory Box die to cut out three trees to make her "crown".  The wings are a Spellbinder butterfly die.

T then used a Cheery Lynn sunflower die to make the flowers, a Dienamics die for the leaves and ladybugs, a Couture Creations die for the roses, a Memory box die for the bumblebees, a Sizzix die for the bird and a Cheery Lynn die for the butterflies.

I then added buttons and words and the project was done. I am really pleased with how this project has turned out and I had a lot of fun making it.  

I hope you feel inspired to enter our challenge over at Southern Girls Challenge and I look forward to seeing your entries.

I am entering this project on the following challenge blogs 
Rhedd's Creative Spirit
Altered Eclectics
Left of Centre Challenges