Butterfly swirls

While waiting for a thick layer of acrylic gel to dry on another piece for the Collage Makers Summit, I took the opportunity to tidy up the scattered papers from making Photo kintsugi and Vintage grid.

Or, at least, that was the plan. But… I had a spare panel that I had prepped for the Summit. And I had quite a few small scraps of paper that were probably destined for the bin. And I’d had an idea for making gilded swirls that I wanted to try on something. So…

Without thinking about it too much, I covered the panel with collage. Then I fussy cut a spare butterfly and glued that on too.

Once it was all dry, I gave the butterfly a couple of coats of gloss varnish so that the colours would stand out more against the background papers. Then I drew a swirly trail that covered the area around the butterfly using Pebeo mixtion relief, left it to dry for a while and gilded it with gold mirror effect sheet.

Afterwards, I decided to gild the edges of the panel as well. For this I used Pebeo gilding paste (which is very watery and not at all paste-like) and gilding flakes.

Then I finished tidying up the desk.