A very wonderful place

This wasn’t so much an unfinished project as a barely started one. In fact, I really had no plan for this at all. When I made my golden ivy piece, I ended up with more coloured texture paste than I needed; not wanting to waste it, I grabbed an art card and covered it with the spare paste, creating lots of peaks and texture.

So, no plan. But it was definitely something that had been started, so it needed to be finished. The first thing I did was give it a light sanding to get rid of the spikiest bits (and some of them were very spiky).

Looking at it I got the feeling of an aerial map; areas defined by mountain ranges and other, flatter, areas that could be plains or seas. So I gave it a base coat of blue as a starting point.

I didn’t want to try and impose any hard outlines of land masses on it — this is more an impression of a map than a diagram of one — so I let the paint do a bit of the work, pooling in some areas and spreading in others. I used the gorgeous fresh orange paint to contrast with the blue, thinned it down so it could move more easily and then followed the contours of the texture paste.

I dry-brushed a little sparkly blue around the edges and then sat back and wondered how to finish it off.

A dig through my charms stash found a number of things that might have worked: I was going down the anchor/sailing route at one point but couldn’t find just the right piece. Then I came across this tree which was the perfect size and style; the clippings stickers provided the words to go with it and a dab of black ink set it off from the background.

Supplies:

• Prep & Stick:
  Finnabair 3D gel
• Texture:
  Finnabair paper texture paste
• Colour:
  Finnabair metallique paint – rich turquoise, fresh orange
  Finnabair sparks paint – magical pond
  Ranger archival ink – jet black
• Paper & Fabric:
  That’s Crafty greyboard ATC
• Embellishments:
  tree charm
  Tim Holtz clippings stickers