Christmas Canvas

Our wonderful guest design for November, Karen Bearse created this awesome Christmas canvas to share with you today.  

For my first project I made this fun holiday canvas. I love Daniel Torrente's style especially his awesome Charlie Brown tree. It was fun working with his images! 

I started by layering torn paper on a canvas & than covering it with a wash of gesso. I love this technique, you can use some of your stash papers & tone them down making a nice start to your background. 

Next came stencils & sprays to add some interest. Once dry stamping with random background stamps helped grunge up the page. The stars were made with stencils, & modeling paste. Once the paste is dry, the colors tend to bleed through so using a sharpie poster marker helps whiten them up. I find that Carrot's (Jill Penney) hair looks like mistletoe perfect for the top of the canvas. 

It is tough to stamp on canvas so the the images were stamped, embossed, colored on paper and cut out. To help my tree & words pop- I smudged oil pastel to highlight. 

Christmas is sparkly so this canvas has lots of that going on. Stickles are your sparkle friends and are great to use on top of modeling paste, as berries, and on my mistletoe leaves. Last step is a bit of paint on a foundation sponge with a star stencil- helps blend the images into the canvas. 

Enjoy!