How a blank canvas picked me up out of my creative slump!

Yes, it’s been about 5 months since I had a blog post. Between the holidays, vacations, super bowl (work related) and a death in the family, I haven’t been in a crafty state of mind. My craft room was a disaster and I didn’t want to enter it let alone craft in it. I finally committed and after 3 hours I could see the floor again. You can see below before and after photos.  

Now that the room was in order the next step was to create some projects for classes. I had completed three projects before the holidays and those classes were submitted and taught at The Crop Shop. They can be seen below.

BoBunny Snowfall Album

Double-Z Fold Album card

Bird Arch album

But as I thought back I couldn’t remember the last time I created something for just the heck of it. I get together with some friends each month and we craft. The last couple of gatherings I haven’t really been in the creating mood, more of an organizing mood (figure out a way to organize and store, embossing folders, metal die cuts, and of course the ever expanding pile of ribbon).

Well, today after helping out some close friends at a great craft event, I met up with some other crafty friends. We were gathering to share and explore the world of art journaling. We had bought some Dylusions stamps a few months back and we thought getting together for some inspirational time would do us all some good. I had bought the Dylusions sprays also and brought along some stencils and masks and some old ledger books I bought on eBay. I started out playing with the sprays and inking up the pages of the ledger book to get a good base for the pages along with seeing how the colors looked when applied to the pages. This was a great way to get my feet wet again. 

Once I finished the pages one of the ladies gave us some canvases she had laying around her house and thought maybe we could do something with them. I first started to spritz my favorite color palette (red, oranges and yellows). On the coated canvas they dried a little muted but were okay. I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the canvas and since I had been working on a napkin decoupage technique I had seen at one of the craft trade shows, I thought it would be a good idea for the canvas my friend had given me. As I started looking through the many decorative napkins I had procured over the last week, I picked out a couple and then realized the sprays I was working with were a little bright for the color palette of the napkins. But I was not about to be deterred, so I just started spraying layer upon layer and blotting the pools of color over and over until the right blend of colors appeared on the canvas. I will say this I don’t think I could recreate the background to save my life. It was a happy accident so to speak that this particular color scheme came together.


Next, I selected the napkin I wanted to be the main focal point and then some additional elements from another napkin. I applied the Viva Décor decoupage to the napkin. Then I added some Viva Décor ultra licht clay to the areas I wanted to become three dimensional and then added the final layer of napkin by applying the decoupage again. The next element was adding some accent to the butterflies to make them pop and I did that by applying some Viva Décor Crystal Gel to them. My final touch was to stamp a saying from one of the Dylusion sets. When all was said and done,  I had a completed piece of art that I did JUST FOR ME! I felt so happy, excited, elated, gleeful, energized and of course a sense of satisfaction. It took a blank canvas to raise me up from the creative rut I was in to a Crafty State of Mind! Thank you Jacki!