Earth Queen Shadow Box Frame

I'm really excited to be a guest for this month's challenge over at Creative Artiste Mixed media Challenge.  The theme is always anything goes with mixed media so decided that that my shadow box frame would be a good project to share with you all.

There is a lot that I really like about this Magic Forest collection from Stamperia and  in particular the Earth Queen mold. I am still quite a novice with mixed media and gradually building up my stash so tend to use whatever I have in my stash to compete my projects, with a bit of experimenting along the way.

I finally found a use for a 6 x 6 inch wood box frame that I had bought a few years ago and decided to make a paper mache textured base for my box using torn up tissue and pva glue. I then added lots of texture to resemble tree bark with a pokey tool. I thought this would give me  a more rustic base rather than texture paste and its cheaper too!

Once dry I planned to paint it first with black gesso and then with burnt sienna acrylic paint, leaving a hint of the black to show through.

I also experimented with colouring my air dry clay.  The closet colour that I had in my stash to a skintone ish colour was Pebeo studio acrylics paint in buff, and it worked out fine (although its not a great picture). This saved me having to worry about a streaky face and it did look a lot better when I added some highlighter blusher all over (that I no longer use) to add some tone.

Being a very slow crafter these days the painting of the Earth Queen mould was probably what took me the longest to finish purely because I use a very fine paintbrush as I find it easier to paint with less mistakes and do a section at a time. I also used burnt sienna acrylic paint for her hair too and LuminArte H20  watercolour paint in gold for her hair band.

I painted my leaves with Stamperia Allegro paint in avocado, adding a touch of  ocra acrylic mixed into the centres for more tone and then edged them with Art Alchemy antique brilliance lucky emerald wax. I love using wax, it really brings out the detail in your projects.

I used part of one of the rice papers from the Magic Forest collection on the base of the frame and used Art Alchemy rusty brown matt wax, a little antique gold wax and patina antiquing paste wax on the jewelled piece at the front to finish my frame off.

I have really enjoyed creating this shadow box frame and hope join the in the challenge this month too.  There are some amazing projects and inspiration over on the blog to follow too every month.

Have a fab week, whatever you have planned for yourself

Happy crafting