Fabric Elements Creative Challenge Winner

We have a winner to the Fabric Elements Creative Challenge! Barbara’s beautiful sunflower card was the clear winner with 77 votes. Keep reading to see her lovely work and learn about her process in creating the piece.

I have always created and it all started with sewing and my love for fabric continues although I do not sew anymore.  I have played with paper for about ten years.  I am mostly a card maker but always enjoy making canvases and doing mixed media projects.  Now that I have retired I am enjoying developing other areas of creativity that have always interested me.

This creation is actually a canvas.  It is 8 x 10,  The canvas was covered with tissue paper and then painted with cream acrylic paint.  I used Rebekah’s stencils and added dimension with brown inks and paint.

The sunflower was created out of the Waffle Muslin.  I cut a pattern with my Silhouette.  The muslin was adhered to grocery bag paper with iron on adhesive.  The flowers were cut out by hand and painted with an assortment of paints to get the color I wanted.  After they were painted I wet them and crumpled them up and let them dry so I got extra texture.  I took another piece of the muslin and cut the center for the sunflower.  I then did messy French knots to mimic the look of sunflower seeds.  To create depth while assembling the sunflower, thick glue dots were used in between the layers.

The stem and leaves were made from the Wool Felt.  I cut strips of the felt and colored them with acrylic paint.  I then rolled the felt and did some hand stitching to make it round.  For the leaves I used the same method but to create the leaves I  tied a knot in the center and then formed the leaf shape.

The outside of the canvas was trimmed out with two layers of patterned paper.  Over the top of the paper strips, I centered strips of fabric.  I also tied a bow out of a torn strip of the fabric.

Before adding the elements to the canvas, bronze acrylic paint was splattered over the canvas.  The flower, stem, leaves, buttons, and bow were added using hot glue.

At this point, I misted gold spray in the air and let it fall onto the flower and canvas.  Everything has a beautiful sparkle to it.

The sentiment was embossed on paper which was painted with blue acrylic paper and cut out.  It was adhered to the canvas with gel medium.