October 14, 2020 Janine O'Rourke

WONDERS OF THE SEA by Liz Marsden

Hi,

I'm here today with a project which I've loved creating.

I love under the sea projects and Seahorses are one of my favourites, so I've used a few Finnabair mixed media and Dusty Attic chipboard products on a reverse canvas frame.

I took a Cobblestone stencil and some modelling paste and stencilled the lower outer frame to give a little texture, and let this dry.

I then painted the reverse of the canvas frame with some different colours of Finnabair blue and green acrylic paints. These I watered down in places with a lot of water on my brush to give variations of colour too, and set aside to let this dry.

I took this adorable Dusty Attic Sea Horse and added some mechanicals Steampunk Gears along with some Dusty Attic corals cut down, then a few metal embellishments from my stash. I glued these on with some Finnabair Heavy Body Gel, then I left them to dry.

When they had set I got some of the fabulous Patina effect pastes using the blue and green colours and added the colour by stippling it on with a brush. I went over with the colours in places for added depth, then later I went over parts with some waxes in Old Denim and Mint Sparkle.

I built up some layers for the underwater scene by adding some cloth type fabric I have in my stash which I painted with two colours of Dusty Attic acrylic paints in Pesto and Forrest, (you can see this behind the seahorse's head), then built up layers of Dusty Attic Corals. These I painted with Heavy White Gesso first then when wet added some mini Art Stones over the top. Then when dry I painted over with the D/A paints.

I added some Air Dry Clay Stars from a Finnabair Mould but shaped them before drying to look more starfish (hopefully) in shape. These I painted with some of the Patina paste then went over with the Old Denim Wax.

On the other side I did similar but first I added a cut down section of D/A Fish Net Panel, to this I added the pastes too. Again I added some of the Coral with some more of the starfish!! When dry I glued some seashells and moss from my stash.