Over at the Felting and Fiber Studio, Karen had challenged us to make a mixed media piece that included something fiber, something metal and something in the paint variety. This is definitely not the way I usually work but I had started a stitched piece that I thought would work. I showed you the stitched part last week. It was free motion machine stitched on to a painted fabric background. After it was stitched, I colored in the flowers with Inktense pencils and then wet them down with a water brush to simulate water colors.

Then I started working out how I would add metal. I tried a variety of rusty metal washers but I didn’t really like how they looked. It just looked like I was sticking them on there because I had to add metal.

I liked the addition of this rusty metal wire better. I guess it had a more organic feel to it.

Then I painted the fabric with a slightly watered down Golden gel medium. I also painted a couple of layers of the gel medium on the wood too. Once that had dried. I use the gel medium straight from the jar (no water added) to glue the fabric to the wood. You can see that the red fabric bled a little bit onto the green background but that didn’t bother me. It took a couple of days to completely dry,

I then stitched the metal piece down to the fabric to hold it in place. I’m happy with the results and I am planning on doing a series of Montana wildflowers like this piece. I also started a second mixed media piece which I’ll show you soon. Thanks Karen – this was a fun challenge!