Mystery Project–Part 3–Turquoise Heart

For the second of the three hanging heart ornaments, I chose a turquoise and terracotta colour scheme. As I started making this, I decided to give it a suggestion of a Spanish theme, because the friend for whom I was making this one loves visiting Spain. I also wanted to make a more colourful, and perhaps more illustrative and pictorial, frame than for my other friend, the artist, for whom I made the brown frame.

This colour combination as a new one for me, and I was inspired by Zsuzsa of InkyDinkyDoodle blog – she uses a lot of these colours and I’ve always thought how lovely they were! Thanks, Zsuzsa. I’ve been meaning to try these colours for a while now.

I began by getting out various bits and pieces in order to choose what to use for the various embellishments on this frame. I didn’t use the poultry grit (broken up bits of shell) in the end.

I decided I wanted to add a couple of small terracotta pots as embellishments, and knew I didn’t have any such ready-made embellishments in my stash, and slept on it for several nights, wondering how to achieve the look I wanted. When I started rummaging in my mixed media oddments box, I came across a bag of empty silk cocoons that I’d bought several years ago at a craft show, and thought, “Perfect!” Not only were they exactly the right size, but they also had just the right texture, too! I trimmed them down to shape so that I could stick them to the frame.

To create the top edge of the “pots,” I stuck down two different thicknesses of string. This proved to be a very fiddly job and I couldn’t get the string to stick at first, and then I tried doing it with Glossy Accents, which eventually worked. You can see that I have cut one of the little pots to look as if it was broken. They look a bit dirty around the top because the cocktail stick I used to help me stick on the string was a bit grubby! No matter – they were going to be painted anyway.

The first step was to paint them with gesso.

Now they were ready for painting with acrylics. I used Burnt Sienna and created shadows with Burnt Umber.

On a scrap piece of watercolour paper which I’d cut to fit the recess in the frame, I painted a simple seascape and fixed it in place.

I cut a short length of black lace and stiffened it with some watered-down PVA glue and stuck this in place – reminiscent either of a Spanish mantilla or of the black wrought iron balconies so commonly seen in Southern Spain.

To create an impression of sand, I added some pumice gel medium and painted it with acrylics.

The frame was then ready for the rest of the embellishments.

Here are the flowers and leaves I used.

To stick the little pots in place, I filled the backs with hot glue and then stuck them in place with more hot glue.

Here is the finished piece, with all the embellishments stuck down with hot glue.

I shall be giving my friend this little heart in the New Year when we are planning our lunch get-together which had to be postponed from before Christmas. She doesn’t visit my blog so I thought it would be safe to post about it before she receives it!

Here are the first two hanging hearts together. At this stage I hadn’t done more than the basic preparation on the third one.