My first mixed media canvas panel. I’m not sure what the original inspiration was, but I had the idea of standing inside a room looking through a window at the moon and once I had enough of a picture in my mind, I started creating it on canvas.

The canvas is 8″ square. Not huge, but significantly more intimidating than an A6 (roughly 6″x4″) card base!

I started by painting it with black gesso, creating the moon and marking out the window area.

Once the moon was dry, I slowly added the other elements.

Patterned paper for the wallpaper.

Edge die-cuts for the pelmet.

Silver texture paste applied through a stencil along the bottom.

A trail of shiny flowers.

SnipArt in the corner of the window. And some hidden mosaic mirror pieces.

A piece of muslin spritzed with glimmer mist for the curtain.

A fabric base for the key to sit on with its ribbon.

A keyhole for the key on the wall.

And many shiny embellishments scattered around.

And I was absolutely making it up as I went along. I know how to stamp, I know how to stencil and use texture paste, I know how to add embellishments. But this was the first time I had tried to create anything remotely like this. Even the winter box didn’t really help me as it was such a small project in comparison…

The one trick that might be worth sharing — and this could come in handy for card-making too — is how I created the sentiment (for want of a better term).

I knew what words I wanted to use. I made a note of this sentence when I came across it while reading A Girl and her Fed. But I also knew I didn’t want to have to build it from an alphabet stamp set. And I didn’t just want to print it out.

Inspiration struck. I formatted it on the computer in a not-too-fussy font and printed it out. Then I laid a piece of vellum over it and traced it with a white Sharpie paint pen. It looks handwritten, but not in my iffy handwriting. Success.

For a first attempt, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.