Creative Jump Start 2014: Junk Picture

I've admired the canvases, journals and scrapbook pages of Anna Dabrowska for years and often wondered how they were made.  Well, luckily for me, Anna showed us the process as part of Creative Jump Start 2014.

This was my finished piece:

And this is the process I went through:

First of all I stuck down some lace ribbon and some old book pages (without looking what was on them, oops! Never mind they were covered up with gesso completely!)   Then I worked out what junk items I would be using and stuck them into position.  A teaspoon was the item suggested on the video and I hapened to have one that I got from a charity shop for 30p so down it went.  I found all sorts of other items like washers, hama beads, even the circular bit left over from my boy's toy cap gun.  I also found a toy snake which my boys tell me they want back!  (Too late boys, it's stuck fast).  Everything got covered in gesso:

..and I had a real problem with mine.  The gesso I used was really old and thick and refused to come off the brush half the time, so that was a bit of a hinderance.  It took ages, getting in all the nooks and cranies.

I found some more items to add in my box of metal items.  Nuts, a mini padlock and key and I loved those swirly paper clips.

 

To complete I also found some more buttons and beads.

Everything was gessoed ready for painting:

...and I have to say I was a bit concerned that I would spoil it.  I quite liked the white, but I knew that I wanted  the love bit to be red so thats how I started, not really knowing how it would go from there.  I then added some purple.

Not sure I liked it but there was no going back now... and before I knew it I'd added brown and gold and it turned out a lot more colourful than I intended.

I checked back at Anna's video and noticed that she left quite a bit white.  Maybe, when I get myself some decent new gesso I could tone it down, just a bit....

Thanks for looking today, see you again soon for some more CJS2014 projects.

Nicky {Creative Flourishes}