The first Crafty Girls Cottage Getaway was a roaring success! For three days, Paula, Lori, and I accomplished so many Random Acts of Creativity! On the beautiful rocky shore of Lake Simcoe, we cooked, ate, drank (Black Fly coolers, of course), gabbed, laughed, and crafted!
GOING FOR FIVE STARS
PAINT PREP
To begin the craft, we each chose four or five different colours of paint. Lori is a colour genius so she helped us with our combinations. We then poured our paints into the bottom of our disposable cups (1/4″ or so).
After adding a squirt of glazing liquid and eight or so drops of water from an eye dropper or pipette into each cup, the thinned paint was ready for the silicone spray. One good spray and very little mixing was all that was needed before we carefully poured our various colours of paint into one cup.
Next, comes the fun part; we poured the contents of the cup onto the wooden initial and then tilted it in various directions until it was covered! Left to dry, we put the initials aside to start on our canvases.
BIGGER AND BETTER
Now for our favourite part! Holding the paint-filled cup, we flipped them over and held them in the middle of our canvases, letting gravity pull all the paint down in the inverted cup. After thirty seconds or so, we lifted the cup to excitedly watch the paint flow across the canvas.
Holding the canvas by the edges, we tilted and turned the canvases to cover the surface and create some awesome patterns! If you are like me, you and everything around you are covered in paint at this point. If you are like Paula and Lori, you are still annoyingly clean at this point.
HEATING THINGS UP!
Once we covered our canvases to our liking, we were ready for the best part! Using a heat gun, we trained it on the paint swirls (from a good distance, of course). Paint cells began to appear within the patterns like little dots of colour! Amazingly, the longer we added heat, the more cells that appeared.
The paintings continued to change as they dried, with some areas even cracking to reveal colours below. Paula dragged a feather through one of her canvases for even more visual interest. We let our paintings dry for two days.
The results were fantastic!
We were honestly like six year old kids marveling over our artwork; that might also have been the alcohol beginning to talk.
Paula’s craft was given a much deserved FIVE STAR rating! Now, where to hang my canvases …