Faded Splendour - a Beer Mat and ATC Trio - by Claudia

 Hi, servus and thanks for stopping by! It's been quite some time since I last posted on here, so I am glad to be back with a new project today! I hope you'll like it!

As autumn is already in the air over here (starts earlier each year), I am starting into my favourite season of the year - being mainly inspired by beauty in decay and the signs of fading splendour all around. So I have created a little trio of insect beauties and I like to think of them as having been found on the ground (already dead) instead of hunted down alive to be put in a frame...

I have finally set up the new studio with (almost) all the stuff I prefer to use in my mixed media art (well, something is always missing because it is in the wrong studio and I guess that will stay this way for a while longer...lol) and got to play with the lovely set of insects dies, some almost forgotten embossing enamel and lots of Distress inks of all kinds as well as some of my favourite DecoArt products. 

I knew I wanted to make a trio, but at first I thought I would use the Domed Top Triptych MDF Kit, 

...then, later in the process, while playing around with a lot of other Calico Craft Parts, decided to combine a Square Beer Mat and two Plain ATC Wood Blanks to form a trio with a wider centre piece. 

As you can see I also tried out different smaller Calico Craft Parts to add to my framed beauties on their panels. In the end I picked two label holders from the Sheet of Mini MDF Label Holders Wood Shapes and one of the cool Steampunk-Vintage Word Elements. You can guess that these are some of my most often used favourite Calico Craft Parts - they look so cool on so many projects! 

The little frames were die cut and then given a coat of DecoArt Raw Umber Student Acrylic paint. Once that had dried, I scraped on some white DecoArt media Crackle Paint here and there and let that air dry. 

Then I toned down the white from the Crackle Paint by adding embossing glaze. I also added a chunky copper emossing enamel here and there for a bit of bling and extra texture. 

The insects parts were die cut from papers I had made during some other session, using loads of Distress Inks of all kinds. 

To give the insects' legs and some of their wings a glossy look and a bit of dimension, I added slightly diluted DecoArt Triple Thick with the very tip of a detail brush and let that air dry (which is so much less fiddly than using black embossing powder I've found). The eyes were done using pure Triple Thick, which domes quite nicely. 

Some of the crumpled wings were additionally inked with brown archival stamping ink (using a piece of blending foam) to make the crinkles more visible. 

To create the background on the beer mat and ATC blanks I used DecoArt dècoupage paper and matte Decou-Page, which I evenly spread on the blanks before I pressed these to the backside of the paper. Once the Decou-Page had dried, I sanded off any excess of paper. The edges of the panels were inked with brown archival ink too. 

For some additional splendour I sprinkled diluted DecoArt Vintage Brass Extreme Sheen paint using a splatter brush on the finished insects. 

Then I used a detail brush to paint the domed eyes with Vintage Brass as well. 

Finally the frames, insects, stamped number labels, Word Element and label holders got fixed to their spots using sticky foam dots. 

I am still looking for a matching wooden tray to fix the trio to, so for now I have arranged the panels on a large wooden tray so you get the idea of the finished project. 

Depending on how the light hits the insects, the gold sprinkles on the insects and copper embossing on the frames become visible. I love the thought of this being sunlight, shining through the forest's thicket, kissing the fading beauties on the ground so they can be found by some watchful wanderer...

See you soon! 

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx