Be True to Yourself Canvas

Good morning and a happy Monday to you!  Hope your week is starting off great!  Mine sure is.  Do you use Groupon or Living Social, or other type of places for special deals?  If you do, you know what I am talking about, however if not, you need to sign up for some of these services, as you can get some pretty awesome deals. So today I am going to a tea house with my sweet friend Alice.  We are both looking forward to it and even though I don't do bread stuff any longer I am going to have some today. I really don't miss bread, as I found amazing recipes to replace the traditional ones, but since they don't serve low carb at a tea house typically, I will break my rule for once....LOL

Anyway, today I have a super fun project to share with you.  I started this a few weeks ago and finished it last week just with the perfect touches.  Let me tell you the background story on this canvas. First of all most of it is not my design.  I had to go to a pharmacy a few weeks ago and while waiting for my medication I perused the store and looked at the greeting cards.  Well, there was this one greeting card that stuck out, as it sure was all mixed media style.  So I picked it up and I was inspired IMMEDIATELY to recreate this card into a canvas.  I want to give 100% credit to the artist, and thank her for this inspiration.  Her name is Lisa Kaus and I suggest check out her blog as she is amazing.  Not even realizing this, but apparently I have pinned quite a bit of her work on my Pinterest Mixed Media board, too, so I sure like her...LOL  I really aspire to be able to create beautiful canvas pieces like her.  

So, that's how I created this little 8x10 canvas.  I drew my house and bird based on her work on the greeting card I purchased.  Thankfully I can sort of draw once I see something, so that wasn't difficult.  Since I was at a scrapbook store when I started this, I was able to purchase cool patterned papers to work with and used Gelatos, Pan Pastels to create my background.

The flowers and the flourish stamps are all by Verve stamps, which I thought were just perfect for this.  The flourish comes from the Sunny Days set and the flowers are from the Feel the Sun set and the Sentiment on the heart is from my current Verve favorite is called Brighter Days.  My flowers were stamped, colored with Copic markers, than cut out and glued to the canvas.  The beautiful butterfly is a Prima Canvas butterfly, which I painted with Twinkling H2O's...so pretty, isn't it??

Here is a close up of the canvas so you can see the flourishes.  Once I stamped them I added Diamond Stickles to it, and I think it makes the stamps pop, so I like the way it turned out.

I also wanted to add more thoughts to the canvas, so I pulled out Marah Johnson's Creative Imaginations Monarch Chipboard Stickers.

Here is another closeup shot of the bottom portion of the canvas.  Do you see the pretty doily in the background of my house? Well, the day I was working on this canvas, we went out to lunch during our crop to celebrate my sweet friend, Karen's birthday and the restaurant serve tea with these pretty doilies under the cup, so we asked out wonderful waitress to let us have some and we made sure to tip her well....LOL....See, you never know where you crafting supply will come from.  Sometimes you just have to go out to lunch with friends....LOL