Experimenting {& a give-away reminder!}

I ran into a technical glitch with the large canvas I'm working on, so it was back to the proverbial drawing board!  Sometimes problem solving gets in the way of creating, but I enjoy the process.   I'm working on different ways to best adhere leaves to a canvas. 

Tonight I wanted to see how liquid polymer would work when poured over mixed media.

Using gel medium, I started by sticking a paper background down on this 5×5" canvas.  Then a layer of leaves and a girl I had painted on watercolor paper.  Once it was dry, I mixed up the polymer to pour over the top.  You can see some little bubbles coming up to the surface.

If you gently breathe on them, they'll pop and the surface will smooth back out. 

I can already see one thing to do differently ~ which is good, I wanted to do my learning on this small canvas instead of ruining a large work. 

The edges of any paper sections need to be sealed with the gel medium before pouring the polymer.  You can see how the green paper has soaked in some of the moisture and darkened a bit.  {It shows up best in the first photo.}  Without a "before & after" you can't really see it, but the painting of the girl has soaked up a lot of it too.  I didn't coat her at all…just glued her down before pouring the finish over the top.

Now the canvas is sitting protected under a box overnight to keep dust from settling into it as it dries.  Ought to be interesting to see how it looks & feels tomorrow.  I think for my 12×36" canvas, this type of finish might make it too heavy?   We'll see!