13arts guest designer

Ah, my poor neglected blog! I have not one but two projects to share that I created for 13arts. My July project can be seen here with a full product list. The His & Hers paper range has some beautiful feather designs on it and they always make me think of wings, so that's exactly what I made with them!

 For my August project, I wanted to make something a little different. I had an old Christmas decoration lantern that I got super cheap in the sales so I decided to give it a new lease of life as a galaxy lantern.

 I removed the glass panels from the frame and put them to the side. I primed the frame with black gesso, and then roughly mixed together metallic bronze paint, Expresso paint and clear Crackle glaze and painted the frame with the mixture. Once it was dry, I added some drops of Turquoise mist to chalk-finish medium to give a very matte mixture and used this to highlight the cracks and to give a faded look. I then dry brushed white gesso over the frame to highlight some areas. Now for the galaxy look!

  Because I wanted the outside of the glass to remain smooth, I had to paint the galaxy effect in reverse. First, white gesso was splattered over the glass to create the look of stars and once this was dry, I added swirls and areas of Gold Glitter paint to create the effect of constellations. Then I poured some acrylic liquid medium into a spray bottle and covered the glass in it to seal the layers so far and create a little dimension. (This stuff is amazing! So versatile and so many things you can do with it!)

 

Next I took my turquoise mist, dirty pink mist and Vivid violet paint and used a paintbrush to create areas of colour around the glitter; blend the colours together, leave areas where the colour pools, let the colours dry and then apply further coats to create areas of light and more intense colour- basically just play about until you are happy with the effect! I took my spray bottle of liquid medium again, but this time applied a very, very thin layer of the medium as too much can cause the mists to run, so I did multiple thin layers to seal the colours.

 Now to finish the galaxy effect. Over the areas of colour I painted a very light layer of white gesso and over the rest of the glass I painted a thicker layer of black gesso (the reason why will soon become clear!), and when this was dry I put the glass panels back into the lantern.

This is the finished lantern, with a shabby, vintage-effect frame and beautiful galaxy panels, which looks pretty enough. But, if you place a candle or light source inside the lantern and dim the lights a little........

........ the areas of white gesso allow the light to shine through the glass and create a lovely illuminated galaxy effect!