50's retro

My husband won't be a happy bunny this week as he's at work and I'm off (we have different leave years so I'm using up some of my allocation) and of course at this precise moment in time it is sunny after a particularly wet (good) and cold (bad) Easter weekend. 

Yesterday in our house was a sewing / sowing day, husband in the green house (it's very The Good Life in our house sometimes, not quite sure I have Felicity Kendall's bottom though) sowing  seeds for the veg garden and me in the craft room sewing random bits of fabric to paper.

I like my 8x8 pages but sometimes I just want to go BIG and create something on a larger scale that I can put in a large frame.  I have a lot of wall space in my bedroom and I'm slowly filling it with art like this. 

 

The previous evening I'd been playing with some of my photographs adding finishes, textures and changing the colour, saturation etc.  I printed this one of a very faded red rose we had in the garden last year.  

I attacked it with some sandpaper to remove some of the colour, reveal some of the other colours used in printing and generally roughed it up a bit. I loved how it really made the colours change and it started to look like a hand tinted photo from the 50's that had aged and cracked a bit.  I then added a thickish layer of Rock Candy Crackle and left it to dry overnight.  

Monday morning in the rainy gloom, I  splodged some Rose Fresco Finish paint over an A3 piece of paper, using a sponge and a wet wipe.  I then stamped a large damask stamp with Maroon Archival randomly over the page to look like old faded wallpaper. 

Pulled out some scraps of fabric and started sewing them on, layering up here and there with loads of very wonky stitching!  Took some Hyde Park Fresco Finish and put a tiny amount in a mister bottle and added some water.  Shook it up to mix and they spritzed it randomly over the page especially round the edges.  Once that was dry I gessoed over the top with a roller to tone it all down.

Whilst that was drying I turned to the photo, it was looking good with that crackle on top.  Added some Fresco Finish in Beach Hut (I know it sounds weird, but it just needed some blue in amongst that green and red)  and sewed it onto some rough calico.

I started to add more layers to the background A3, first some paper strips vertically and then some corrugated card horizontally.  Finally a strip of fabric with orange, red and green in it with a riped strand of green cotton attached with some pearlised peacock blue thread (lots of stitching).  The photo was added on top. 

This A3 was then scuffed up at the edges, some walnut stain added and put on top a bigger piece of cream card that had some gesso on it and Old Paper Distress Ink added (straight to paper technique).

And this is it in all it's finished glory - just need to hang it on the wall now!

 

 hugs

jo

xx