Holiday Canvas Collage: I Could Have Danced All Night

Hi everyone! It's Christina (seena) Young here with a pretty collage project that is simple to put together using matte medium. As October ends I'm thinking ahead to the holiday season. All the festivities inspired my canvas. Well, that and I stumbled upon a used bookshop going out of business and scored some wonderful sheet music for a song (ha ha).

I started by ripping up a few music sheets and used matte medium to lay them down in a random fashion. Doesn’t this look neat?

Next, I blended Gelatos® in a range of blues to make a colorful background. I added yellow for some pops of color. The matte medium base made working with the Gelatos® a dream; they spread really smoothly over the canvas.

I used some Stampers Big Brush Pens® along the edges of the ripped up pieces of paper and smudged with my finger to add shading. This helps give some depth and visual interest. Again, super easy to blend because of the matte medium’s extended drying time.

Using a Dylusions background stamp I added another layer to the background.

And another. This time with a Tim Holtz stamp.

Who better to dance all night than a pretty young lady wearing a fancy dress? I liked the idea of the sparkly swirls appearing as part of the fabric of her skirt and stamped the image to place it where I wanted the sparkles to appear. I guess this is what fashion design feels like?!

The top of the dress gets its own design in a coordinating fabric. Er, paper.

For some contrast in the background I used Gesso in two ways. First, with an old lid to add some circles and second, watered down to make some splashes by flicking a brush over the canvas.

Finally, I wanted something a little more whimsical than the head that comes on the stamp, so I created one from a retro image I had and used my Stamper's Big Brush Pens® to add some color. Her expression makes me think she’s remembering something fun. Here she is all put together: