Amour

This weekend our best friends were in town. The Men had an errand to run which left the women-folk to fend for ourselves. That meant Art Day! When ever Joy and I get together we inspire each other to work on new and different things.

Joy had said she wanted to learn more about working with clay so I came up with a basic design for a mixed media piece we could both make.

Here is both of our finished hearts, sculpted in a low-temp clay with metal embellishments and a wire hanger attached. Before firing them we stamped the clay to give it texture.
Here is my heart and partially finished wooden frame. I covered the cardboard backing to the frame in decorative paper that looked like old love letters. I painted the frame red and painted on a crackle medium.

Over the crackle medium I painted an acrylic paint called Wrought Iron

Here is the finished piece! I used 3 different font text stamps and added the French word for love: Amour. I painted the heart with several different layers of red paint. I then rubbed on a walnut alcohol ink. As of yet I'm not overly impressed with the alcohol inks. Will need to play with them a bit more.

Here's a detail picture of my heart. It's attached to the frame with a brown silk cord. And hanging at the end is the key to my heart.

Joy's finished artwork is posted on her blog over here. It came out fabulous!!! I always love how we can do a piece side by side and come out with 2 distinct works of art!