Wednesday, November 07, 2012

VerDay Nicho

I have to admit: I had a huge bout of Wine Flu. It hit me last Thursday night when I had only 2 glasses of wine. After not eating all day. 2 GLASSES!!! I will mention Oldest Son thought it a folly to fill each glass almost to the brim and I happily accepted the challenge. Because, you know, I am the Adult, I have something to prove!!!

And today, almost a week later, I am barely able to eat adult food. My coffee intake has been reduced to a few sips and any broth related product makes me drool. I refuse to admit it's because I'm getting older. I claim that it's my delicate southern heritage surfacing.

And Oldest Son better be laying low. He single-handedly (because yes, I HAD to drink that wine otherwise it would have been alcohol abuse of a great chardonnay!) took away one of my favorite past times. Not to mention one of my go-to parenting tools.

But I digress.... I looked around my art area for something to paint and ver-day and my eyes landed on this little nicho. I love to collect these little gems. I think all of my life I have loved boxes and went through a HUGE chunk of my teenage years collecting tiny boxes of all kinds. I rarely put anything in them but I think it was the thought of a special little space right there, just waiting for that treasure.

Anyway, I saw this little one on my wall and knew that it had to be ver-dayed.

I neglected to take the minutia step-by-step photos I normally do. BUT, take your little nicho and decide how you want it to look. I was a little hesitant to go all out and drown it in paint, so I grabbed a small brush and highlighted the detail of the face. I used copper paint on the flowers and the piece on the top. The vines and leaves were painted with bronze paint. Two coats, thoroughly dried. I flooded that little thing with as much patina spray as I could. Then I waited!


Ok, so it's looking good. Still, I wanted more detail, more depth. Using my x-acto knife, I etched the deep parts. The 'ditches' of the rays of the center piece and some of the flowers were cleared of the paint. Then, I went back with a tiny brush, a little diluted black acrylic paint and darkened those places.


When that had dried, I went back with copper paint and a brush and dry brushed the high points of the flowers and the rays. I dipped my brush in a little paint, swiped it on a piece of paper to get most of the paint off, then lightly brushed where I wanted the copper to show up. Just a bit.


I decorated the inside of the nicho with patterned paper, german scrap, and a little piece of art I made. Of course, you can put whatever you like inside and since the holidays are coming up, this technique would be perfect decorated with a family member's photo inside or even a holiday collage for an ornament exchange.


Thank you TENseconds studio for letting me share some of my art! I truly enjoyed using your metal paints and VerDay and will keep them at the forefront of my tools for creating art!!!