Aw...Autumn

The weather finally co-operated enough yesterday for me to head out and see what goodies I could find. I was out of a LOT of my crafting essentials so they were the first order of business. And then I hoped to get some ideas for Christmas. My HL was beginning to put out Christmas but, unfortunately none of their Christmas craft supplies yet. I know it's early but I thought they had it out last year about now. I do know that they are starting to downsize their craft supplies and add more home decor-like the towels, curtains, bathroom accessories, etc. that I happened upon yesterday. It actually served me well because I needed more of the new type hangers I have converted my closet to and Target was sold out. Just happened upon this aisle in HL and was thrilled that it would save me another stop. Of course I won't be as thrilled if having all of this new merchandise cuts back on my Christmas stuff I am waiting for. Lol I will say that I have NEVER seen so much autumn decor. It was EVERYWHERE throughout my VERY large store! Everyone knows that I love autumn but even I was overwhelmed!!

In any case, one of the things I loaded up on was canvases and so today I thought I would start on the image I downloaded a bit ago. I love this image. It just spoke to me and I knew I had to find a way to use it somewhere.

Just luck that I saw that little pumpkin "painting"-although I will say that it does a pretty good job of imitating an oil painting-and grabbed it up. It was $4.99 and then 40% off. I can think of many places where it will be at home. In any case, when I pulled out the print I realized how well the colors go together. I love these soft oranges and creams for autumn and this just made me all the more excited to get going.

This was pretty much the usual canvas routine. I started by painting it with my Waverly antique wax. Usually I wipe this wax off a few minutes after applying-kind of like a stain. But, this time I liked the dark color so I left it as is and went on to using the water around the edges to rip off enough so that the image would fit the 8X10" canvas.

Then I was ready to ModPodge on the image but the wax was still tacky so at this stage I wiped it with a paper towel and, much to my surprise, it started pulling the wax off all of the way down to the white of the original canvas. I didn't want to use more wax so I dry brushed the white areas with an orange chalk paint and it looked better.

Then it was a simple matter of ModPodging on the image and going back around the edges with a Tim Holtz Distressing ink. And, look how nice it goes with the pumpkin I made a few years ago. I think that means that this canvas will end up in the family room this year...we shall see.

And, another serendipity moment. I was looking at my pictures the other day and kind of deciding that "maybe" I did have too many sunflowers. And then my mind wondered why I never added olive branches since I also lean toward the Mediterranean theme this time of the year. And, as I'm perusing the faux florals on sale this week at HL, what do I happen upon but relatively nice olive branches. They weren't inexpensive even on sale so I only bought two bunches but I should have known better not to break my rule of "3". I always buy three (or any other odd number) when I am using things for decorating and of course, I will be going back to HL because this just seems a bit off to me. But, it lessened the sunflower presence and I'm happy that fate took me down the correct aisle.

So that's it for today-Fri-Yay! I'm going to grab some lunch, get a few "to-dos" off of my list and then call it an early day but I'll be back with more of our tour soon. Stay safe and stay tuned.