Creativity & Courage - Triptych - by Claudia

Servus and welcome to the Calico Craft Parts blog today! Claudia here and it's already two weeks since my last project on here - so time to share something new!

A little mixed media triptych I created using one of the new lovely Triptych Kits Helen has added to the store lately!
There are four different kits with different shapes available at the moment - all in three different sizes to chose from and all made from MDF which is perfect if you want to add some heavy mixed media treatment to them ;) . And they can also be ordered with either ribbon slots or jump ring holes to join them or without any openings  at all.

My triptych was great fun to create and I heavily enjoyed the scraping on, dripping on and stencilling on acrylic paints and letting the media and effects take the lead at some point.

And I love how the doors open up to some important sayings I found I tend to forget about at times...

Calico Craft Parts used:

- Scalloped Triptych Kit - medium size
- Door MDF Wood Shape - Style 5
- Sheet of Mini MDF Door Wood Shapes
- Fancy Plaques 3 - Mini MDF Wood Plaques
- Oval Shape - Mini MDF Wood Plaques
- Sheet of Mini MDF Label Holders Wood Shapes

I first primed my triptych pieces with DecoArt "primitive" Chalky Finish paint...

...then I added some text using a rubber stamp and black archival stamping ink.
As it was a rectangle shaped wood mounted stamp, I ended up with quite rigid, cornered shapes that I didn't like, so I used white DecoArt media Gesso and a palette knife to "break up" some of the edges from the text patterns with scraped on Gesso to help the text pattern blend in with the background.

That was followed by the especially fun part! I wanted to use the new DecoArt Americana premium acrylic paints in a more translucent and watercolour-y way, so I mixed them with equal parts of DecoArt Traditions Watercolour Medium and also added a tiny bit of water. 

I did that directly on my palette sheet using a palette knife to mix the medium and the paint well. Then I took a plastic pipette and soaked some of the mixed paint up from the palette...

...to spritz it on the triptych pieces. I started with Cobalt Teal Hue premium acrylic, followed by Primary Yellow...

...and finally Dioxazine Purple. I didn't wait for each paint to dry - so some mixed directly on the piece and created beautiful extra tones (like green) and marbled patterns. I left the paint to dry naturally so none of the patterns would be "blown away" by the heat tool.

I had done the same with the backs of the doors, because I wanted them to open up and then visually fuse with the triptych background. 

I dry brushed some heavy body white DecoArt Acrylic Gesso onto the other Calico Craft Parts I wanted to use (the word element, door, mini doors, label holder and plaques). Once that had dried I painted some pieces with DecoArt media Gold Green fluid acrylic paint...

...and used the (still not dried!) mixed premium paints from my palette to paint the doors' fronts.

Using a piece of sequin waste as a stencil, I applied dots of white DecoArt media Gesso here and there with a stencilling brush. 

Next I outlined the doors with a black Stabilo All pencil...

...and with a water loaded brush painted a subtle dark outline for the door openings. To stop the black colour from the watercolour pencil from reacting with water or added paints again, I sprayed on a matte finish varnish before I continued.

 The backs of the doors were given a wash of DecoArt media Quinacridone Magenta so they contrasted the colours from the triptych and I stamped the words onto the mini plaques in black archival stamping ink.

Neon green washi tape and DecoArt matte Decou-Page (the washi tape itself isn't sticky enough to hold the doors) were used to create "hinges" for the doors and the triptych pieces .  To finish off my piece I added some doodling with a black permanent marker and a white gel pen. The word element was fixed to the centre piece with a sticky foam pad and some matching cord that I tied at the back of the piece.

I drew thin outlines around the doors and plaques, some faux stitching on the hinges and I highlighted some of the shapes from the wood shapes by tracing these too. 

Some detail shots:

and once more the finished triptych:

I hope you have enjoyed your visit on our blog today and leave inspired and ready to create your own meaningful triptychs! Thank you so much for stopping by and happy shopping and creating! 

Hugs,

Claudia

xxx