Festival Elephant

Hello and welcome to my blog  :)  I'm sharing a piece of home decor with you today, another of my samples from the 'Indian inspired' shows last month.  My inspiration for this piece came from some pictures I'd seen of Elephants that were dressed up and painted for Festivals in India, both religious and otherwise.  

For this project I have used stamps from the Paisley Elephant, Indian Elephant and Indian Textiles sets; Distress Oxide inks, black Versafine ink, clear embossing powder, gold pen, acrylic paint, chalk paint, pearlescent paints, crackle medium, Vintage photo DI, and Grey board from my stash.  

On a piece of white stamping card I stamped the large open Elephant image in black ink and embossed it with clear powder.  I painted the image with DO inks, then stamped a few worker  images on the skin of the Elephant and on some of the cloth.  I used a white and a gold pen, and some DO inks to add colour, pattern and interest.  It didn't matter if I over stamped the outline of the Elephant as I would be painting over them.

I took a dark colour of acrylic and painted the background as I intended to use a crackle medium so a dark undercoat would show the crackles up better. When the paint was dry I applied crackle medium around the edges of the panel and left it to develop.

Next I used a dry brush to apply a neutral colour chalk paint to the background.  This shows up the crackles and adds extra texture.  When the paint was dry I blended DI around the edges and added gold pen.  I then used a little Glossy Accents on the Elephant's eye to make it shine, and added some gems from my stash.   
  

I wanted to create a frame and stand for the artwork, so I took a large piece of thick greyboard and cut a frame, a backpiece and a stand from it.  I used a pearlescent acrylic paint to colour all the pieces and left them to dry.

To create the embellishments I took some scrap black card and stamped and embossed several paisley and floral images.  I then painted each one  before cutting them out.  I assembled the frame and stand then attached the focal panel.  I attached all the embellishments to the corners of the frame and added dots around them with a gold pen.  

I'm really pleased with how this project has turned out, I wanted to create a framed plaque that looks old and distressed, like an old painting.  

Thank you for dropping in today, I hope you've enjoyed this post and that you will visit again soon  :)