Soft Side of Sandi: Be Our Guest Home Decor ~ Creative Embellishments

Monday, June 22, 2020

Be Our Guest Home Decor ~ Creative Embellishments

Hello, Creative Embellishments fans!

Sandi here ... today I'm sharing a sweet, chunky 6x6 canvas that I've created.

This year there have been several families in the area who decided to put out Owl nesting boxes. Apparently Owls don't make their own nest but seek out abandoned nests or things like the hollow of a tree. A few of the families have been lucky enough to attract Owls and even been rewarded with some little Owlets.

That was my inspiration for this piece. I had fun shopping the Creative Embellishments Store to come up with this fun piece. So, I present:

Be Our Guest!

The first thing I did was to color my Owl because I figured it would be the hardest piece to alter. Turns out it wasn't all that hard to create a reasonable likeness, although you will still have to use your imagination! Ha! I used lots of Distress ink products and loved that the Distress Oxides were helpful in producing gray tones on our Kraft chipboard. He turned out pretty cute although not perfect.

Next I used some Mod Podge to add a napkin to the surface of the canvas. I was wanted a little definition behind my birdhouse rather than just painting the canvas but I think I could have saved myself a few steps by just painting and skipping all the napkinizing. I sprayed the adhered napkin with the new Speckled Egg Distress Stain but it was too blue on top of the Mod Podge, so I sprayed some various shades of green to have more of a leafy tree effect.

Then I prepped the 6X6 Floral Panel 2 with several different shades of Distress Stain and Oxides. I also inked it a brown shade right where I planned to adhere the birdhouse, so that it would appear to replicate the back wall of the house. This was done on the canvas as well. That took some time to think out and plan ahead.

The Birdhouse Frame was the next alteration. I used some 13 Arts Cafe Au Lait paint and some walnut stain to good a reasonable "birdhouse" effect. This piece was probably the most simple to alter!

Sort of last minute I decided to add a bird nest and eggs, The nest was treated similarly to the owl. Then I added some filling and dabbed gesso on my eggs.

My title piece was stained first with walnut and then with black stain. Afterwards I added some shimmer with some waxes.

Then it was time to assemble.

Of course, as I assembled, I was constantly adding and taking away color. It was fun to experiment with some of my new Tim Holtz supplies and use some concepts that he has taught.

I finished my piece with a few dabs of white gesso to blend.

And now this new Home Decor piece is headed to the guest bedroom!

Thanks for coming by today!

Sandi