Life's An Adventure Canvas with Deb Riddell

Hello and thank you for stopping by, it’s Deb here with you today.  I’d like to share with you a canvas I made for Creativation 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona that was displayed in Southern Ridge’s trade show booth in January.

I wanted to share my love of nature and the outdoors so used Southern Ridge’s Spruce Tree Cluster, Plump Spruce Tree, Adventure Word, Small Bird Mix and Friends Of Nature chipboard.  I don’t have any step out photos I’m afraid as I was making several projects at the same time when I made it in December but can share some close up photos with you and describe my process.  Hope you will enjoy seeing them!

I started out with a 6” x 8” flat artists canvas and primed it with gesso.  Stenciling came next with Ranger texture paste through several of Tim Holtz’s layering stencils, you can catch a glimpse of Tracks, Chevrons, Linen and Dot Fade in the picture below.

The canvas was then coloured with multiple washes of Distress stains in various shades of blue and once it had dried more stenciling was added through the mini Industrial Layering stencil with Old Paper Distress paint and some second generation stamping was done here and there with Tim Holtz’s Tree Line stamp and Ground Espresso Distress Archival ink.

The edges of the canvas were coloured with Ground Espresso Distress crayon and blended with my finger.

The Spruce Tree Cluster and Plump Spruce Tree chipboard pieces were coloured with multiple shades of green Distress Spray stains plus a bit of Picket Fence Distress spray stain to tone down the colour a bit.  They were adhered to the canvas with wet adhesive.

Three birds from the Small Bird Mix were coloured with Pitch Black alcohol ink and adhered to the top of the canvas.

The Adventure Word was painted with black acrylic paint and then heat embossed with multiple layers of clear embossing powder.   The word was mounted onto small pieces of black fun foam and adhered along the bottom edge of the canvas.

And finally, the grizzly bear from the Friends Of Nature set was embossed with Weathered Wood embossing powder from Emerald Creek Craft Supplies that I tinted slightly with some Ginger alcohol ink to tone down the white accents in the powder.  The bear was also mounted onto black fun foam and positioned on top of the Adventure Word.

As a final step, the back of the canvas was covered with a piece of scrapbook paper from my stash and I die cut a Small Easel die for displaying the finished canvas.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my Life’s An Adventure canvas, I love how it turned out and was thrilled to bits to have it displayed in Southern Ridge’s booth at Creativation, thank you for the opportunity Karen!

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Spruce Tree Cluster

- Plump Spruce Tree

- Adventure Word

- Small Bird Mix

- Friends Of Nature

Other Supplies Used:

- Tim Holtz for Ranger Ink: Distress Ink, Distress spray stain, Distress crayons, Distress paint, Matte Texture paste and Alcohol ink

- Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous: Layering Stencils (Tracks, Chevron, Dot Fade, Linen, Mini Industrial) and Tree Line stamps

- Emerald Creek Craft Supplies: Weathered Wood embossing powder

- DecoArt: Americana Acrylic paint

- Miscellaneous: black fun foam and wet adhesive

Thanks again for stopping by today and as always, happy creating!

Deb xo