Song birds in a forest / Metsälintuja

A while ago I told you my biggest wish and fear concerning mixed media. It is to be able to make picture transfers. I got lots of encouraging comments - thank you guys! So I said to myself, do stop being such a ninny and just do it! Just do it!

These started as a pale blue page from a magazine. It had a story printed on it, which adds nice visual texture, you can still see some words on the leaves.  I stenciled it with latte brown acrylic paint using a leaves stencil. It looked a bit pale, so I went over with clear gesso through the same stencil, just positioning it differently.

After that I went over with distress inks in China blue and Crushed Avocado. I loved the effect they created. The paints flower freely on the clear gessoed background and seeped into the leaves that were still the original paper.

Then I placed some copied text in each card - this was the transfer part. Did it work? (A hint: do you see it anywhere?)

Only partially. I think the background was already too saturated with all kind of product and the text didn't really adhere. Some of it came off, some of it stayed. The transfer medium is rather plastic-y and it didn't come off, but left another layer. This could of course be because of the clear gesso, they might not just play along. I will clearly have to make more experiments on different backgrounds!
           Lastly added some flowers I had made on newspaper and cut-out birds.


entering this set into:
Unstampabelles: Flora and Fauna, with a twist of texture
Simon Says Wednesday: Anything Goes
CountryView Challenge: Spring