ANOTHER REDO: CRESTED IRIS

I have had a hand appliqued Crested Iris hanging on my design board forever because I could not figure out how to finish it.
It was an early attempt at creating my own applique designs inspired by wildflowers. I hand appliqued the flower and leaves. I then enhanced the applique with hand embroider and beading. There is some beading on the background in this photo, which I removed for this redo.  I has also lightly machine quilted the background and applique design.

The border was created using Solvy and layers of thread and yarn that were heavily stitched to form a collage fabric. It was pretty but very floppy. When I decided that I wanted to mount this piece on a painter's canvas, I realized that I would have to do something about the border.

I decided to paint it and see if that would stiffen it. It did. It also got me to thinking about adding painted highlights to the rest of the piece. Unfortunately, I did not take step by step photos.

Here is the finished piece:

 First, I added more machine quilting to the background.  Then I started painting "highlights" on the flower and  leaves. You can see that the color of the flower petals was changed by the paint. That's because, I liked the painted effects so much that I just went for it and painted the whole flower, leaves and the background.

I used Stewart Gill paints on this piece. They have a wonderful, smooth texture and come in a variety of looks.  I used Pearlize and Byzantia on this piece. 

When I was looking up the web site just now, I discovered a new paint, Stewart Gill Gallactica, which is a sparkly, water-based acrylic glitter paint. I think I must get some of this paint.

I ordered all of my paints from the "artisticellar" web site.  Right now they are out of all of the Stewart Gill paints except for the Galactica.  They do have some other luscious looking paints called "Silks Paints" that I am also going to check out. Here is the web site, just in case you want to check it out:  http://www.artistcellar.com/paints/galactica.html

Can one have too many paints in the studio? I'm finding out that I cannot, especially when they come in little jars and I'm having so much fun with them.

This piece has not been mounted on a canvas yet. When it is, I'll use a 1/2" painter's canvas and paint just the part of it that will show.  I'll have details in a future post.

CREATING ALWAYS, WITH JOY,

Karen