Mixed Media - Mother's Butterfly Garden - process

Canvas prepared with gesso, acrylic paint, sequin poop for stencil using soft gel medium and acrylic paint for texture. The birds are a strip of canvas on which I  used sequin poop, and two blue acrylic paints. Adhered using matt medium. 

Originally I sketched the dress for a dress form swap I was in. It was to be made entirely of phone book paper but that project took on a life of it's own. I created ruffles and sewed sequins on one of the two dress forms I created. The second one I made entirely of paper in a very chinese fashion but using oversized sequins as trim. So going through my sketches found this one and decided it was the perfect thing. I traced the original onto tracing paper, then adhered it to watercolour paper with matt medium giving it some "body".

The dress for the she girl before I added arms and face. That weird thing danlgling in the pic is camera "handle". When in the process of "work" I find it hard to pause and take pics so they appear sloppy - sorry.

The below is is a pic of the she girl form with her head and arms drawn on (not original to the sketch) before I cut it apart for the pattern.

                    Next I cut a huge flower from designer card stock and cut the pieces of the she girl apart.

         Then I played with placement and decided I wanted two nodding flower buds on the canvas.

Below I've adhered the nodding flowers where I want them. I've cut and adhered the dress, arms, face and head of the girl from designer card stock. Once dry I began to peel away the tissue paper leaving a stark white and rather textured dress. Next I adhered the large flower and you can see a flower shape in the centre of it. The small flower in the center will be peeled away later.

                      Here you can see me peeling away the last of the tracing paper from the dress.

      Below I am peeling away the tracing paper from the hair. I love the result of this technique.

                         This is a good picture of the work in progress after all the tracing paper is removed.

Again I peel away some paper. This time just the flower I adhered to the surface of the large flower.

I've started placing more birds and inchies. The inchie at the bottom of the plant is done on a one inch square piece of medium weight chipboard. I've woven paper for surface texture and in fact did a long strip of woven inchies all with "space" between. I removed all the extra little blue birds and the strip of woven inchies.

Ultimately I punched a number of butterflies both in brown and the yellow papers and adhered to the inchies and her dress.

Next I cut some tiny ladybugs and adhered them swirling around her.. I'll post a pic of that part of the progress. Lots of growth in Mother's Butterfly Garden!