Altered Canvas in a vintage garden theme

Today I'm sharing one of my favorite themes again.  Nature!  Somehow for me, it's the theme that comes most easily, and gives me the most pleasure in creating.  I began with a simple application of gesso to the frame, then streaked it with some various colors of Folk Art acrylic paints.  When the paint was dry I added some Kroma Crackle.  This crackle product can take a couple of days to "cure" and finish crackling, so I just leave it and move on to other projects.  When it fully "cured", I rubbed on some Prima chalk inks in various colors to bring out the crackled finish.  I found a nature collage style of design paper in my stash that I'd picked up at Michael's, and I secured it to the back of the canvas with mod podge.  Now comes the fun part.  I began to gather my chippies and to ink, emboss and crackle them.  I looked through my "nature" stash and found nests, birds, eggs and mosses.  After that it only took an hour or so to decide on my final arrangement and to adhere the pieces to the canvas.  The gorgeous butterfly is by Renea Bouquets on etsy.

Gina's Designs Products Used:

Chipboard pieces have been colored with Prima Chalk Inks.  These are a great tool for coloring.  If you buy the big set you will have plenty of colors in the same family to use for shading.

Feather Shape Set

Tree 3 ( a portion of the tree can be seen on the inside)

Topiary Trees (basic instructions are below the post on how I colored it)

Grass and Foliage

Postage Frames

Build-a-Layout Country Living (the wagon wheel) crackled with TH distress rock candy crackle paint

Ornate Corners (inner corner top right)

Fall Shape Set (the rake) colored with chalk ink then TH distrees embossing powder to look like rust

Coloring the Topiary:

I began with a light dry brushing of gesso followed by Prima Chalk Ink.  I "shaded" the pot by leaving the thinly coated white gesso uncolored in the center to give it a rounded look.  For the topiary, after I colored with shades of green chalk ink, I added some clear glass bead gel and left it to dry.  It will dry clear.  At that point you will have lots of texture from the beads that will be stuck to the chipboard.  I then rubbed on some Gilders Paste in Vertigris over the beads and along the edges.  Done!