Bronzino Beauties

I love the portraits of Bronzino. He lived his whole life in Florence (1503-1572) and was mainly the court painter for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who happened to be a very powerful Medici, so there are many Bronzino portraits of the Medici family scattered throughout museums around the world. I particularly like his portraits of women. They are so finely done, rich and detailed and studying the faces of these ladies, I can really see their personalities come through the paint. And the jewelry.....holy 24 karats, Batgirl!
Let's just say Bronzino had embellishing down to, well , a fine art. (see what I did there?)

Here's how I started out....
I began with my usual routine of giving everything a good coat of gesso. Sigh....I do love gesso.
I wanted the Triptych-Tower Top to stand out in contrast with the color I was planning on using, so I painted everything that was going to show, black.

I began playing with the layouts of the ladies, moving things around to the spaces I felt they looked best, keeping in mind that there were going to be a bunch of contrasting watercolor flowers behind them.

I also connected the back pieces together using my favorite linen hinging tape and painted it black.

i painted the back completely black after the front dried.

After fussing around with composition some more, I decided that the black background was a bit too heavy and needed some relief, so I painted the top part of the black background gold where the pierced top of the towers show through.

After gluing down my cut-out images of the ladies and flowers to the back side of the front frame, I then glued the whole shebang on to the corresponding backs. I piled some weight on the piece to make sure they dried flat.

 I 'beefed up' the jewelry the ladies are wearing by using Liquid pearls and adding flat back crystals. The I painted some gold detailing around each frame, added some metal embellishments and gave it a good few hours to dry well before I touched up any gold paint. i also made sure that there were no bits of white peeking out the side of the piece and touched up the black where I need to.

SUPPLIES:
Triptych-Tower Top


Additional supplies:
Acrylic paint
Gesso
Liquid Pearls
Bronzini Portraits
Floral collage sheets
Metals embellishments
Linen Hinging tape
Crystals

Thank you for stopping by!

Fairy Tale Trio

A trio of lovely fairy tale ladies to brighten your day. Or not.
The interesting thing about these ladies is that all the images are a bit ambiguous.

Lets take the one called 'The Fairest'. She's beautiful, but does she really look like a nice person?
And what about 'Poison Apple'? Is she about to bite into that apple or give it to some unsuspecting princess?
Hmmmm. The Queen has a rather pleasant face. She may not be evil. Who can tell?
There is always more than one way to tell a story.
I'll let you create your own!

I started out with three of the Blank Altoid Tins without the lids and used the Fairy Tale Frames Altoid Insert Set to create the outer frames around each tin. I painted the frames with pearlescent paints for richness and set them aside to apply after the background were in.
All the tins are covered on the outside with a dark, neutral paper. I used an old G45 Botanicabella paper called Secret Garden, but you can use anything you choose.
The backgrounds inside the tins are wonderful collage paper backgrounds from Alpha Stamps and are as follows;
Poison Apple is Forest Theatre Backdrops Collage Sheet
The Queen is Parrish Castles Collage Sheet
The Fairest is Grimm Covers #3 Collage Sheet
All the ladies are from the Fair Rosamund Collage Sheet
I used the little 7mm Round Red Cabochons as embellishments on Poison Apple.
The filigree pieces I used as the centers of the stamped brass flowers are the 20mm Antique Gold Filigree (for Poison and The Queen) and the Antique Gold Square Filigree for The Fairest.

All the ladies got a few sparklies in the way of some Swarocski flat back crystals and some Diamond Stickles.
And there was a liberal use of  Liquid Pearls from the Liquid Pearls-Neutral Colors Set in gold and white opal.
All the ladies were also put on pedestals (of course!) And I used the Medium Wooden Finial
painted with the appropriate pearl colors for each lady.

For a link to all the supplies used, click HERE.

Supplies:
Black Altoid Tins
Fairy Tale Frames Altoid Inserts
Collage Sheets:
Forest Theatre Backdrops
Parrish Castles
Grimm Covers #3
Fair Rosamund

7mm Round Red Cabochons
20mm Antique Gold Filigree
Antique Gold Square Filigree
Diamond Stickles
Liquid Pearls Neutral Colors Set (Gold and White Opal)
Liquid Pearls-Summer Colors Set ( Hydrangea and Key Lime)
Medium Wooden Finial

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Valentine Plaque

Hello folks! Valentine's Day is just around the corner so I was inspired to make a fun Valentine Plaque using the Mini Display Tray-Heart. I chose this partly because when I was thinking about making a Valentine, it struck me as I picked it up that it's about the same size as a smallish box of Valentine chocolates.
Having had that thought, I immediately had to paint it chocolate brown and then the rest of the piece fell into place.

I started out with my usual coat of gesso and while that was drying I cut and glued the paper to the back piece. A nice rich shade of brown with some gold highlights.

I painted the top frame piece with a matte acrylic brown, making sure I got the sides and all the inside bits.

I cut out my collage images and played with the arrangement until I got the visual I liked, and them trimmed off what wasn't going to show.

I glued everything in place and added all the details........

I used Liquid Pearls in gold and pearl to highlight her jewelry and to make her crown really pop, I put a few Swarovski flat back crystals in the centerpiece. Now she really has a great 'jewel' in there!

I added Liquid Pearl details and some Dresden trim to the phrase and the curly top piece. Which, by the way, is a portion of one of the frames from the Filigree Frames Shape Set. I use bits and pieces from these all the time to add pretty details to my pieces.

This piece is pretty straight forward to make and it's fun. Hope you make one yourself!

SUPPLIES:
  Mini Display Tray-Heart
  Filigree Frames Shape Set


Additional Supplies;
Acrylic paint
Liquid Pearls in gold and pearl
Various collage images
Matte medium
Glue
Bo Bunny Vintage Dot Scrapbook Paper in Chocolate Brown

Thank you for dropping in!