Hi, crafty friend! I always love spring collections because they have such a huge focus on flowers. And this spring themed collection from Prima's The 3 Girls Tale is no exception. But there are also birds, bunnies, bees and butterflies to round out the collection. 

I created a mixed media panel that replicates a little window with a view of flowers and a sweet little bird's nest. I really wanted to make the main part of this project yellow and pink so that the blue of the birds and eggs really popped on the background. 

I've got all the supplies I used listed below, so let's get right into this tutorial!

Let's start by prepping the base of this project. I used 3 sheets of paper from the Among the Wildflowers 12x12 paper pack--a pink background, a yellow background, and the yellow with white daisies. I layered these onto the canvas in a way that I didn't need to trace out the entire shape of the canvas onto my papers--just a little over half of the canvas. 

I cut the shapes out and then tore the bottom half of the yellow and floral papers. Then the rest of the straight edges got distressed. I added a bit of Modeling Paste through one of the Shabby Romantic stencils to the papers and set these aside to dry.

While the paste on the papers was drying, I worked on the moulds. Some of my moulds were cast with white resin and others with Redesign's Casting Mix. I actually started out with the birds in the casting mix, but I was having a bad chronic pain day and I grabbed the mould a little too harshly when painting it and it broke into several pieces. So I recast that one in resin and started the painting process over. When I originally cast this mould in Casting Mix, one of the flowers was not connected to the bird, and I wanted to keep it that way so that it didn't hang over the nest. So while the resin was still soft, I cut the flower off with some titanium scissors. 

Besides the birds, the Ornate Legacy frames and the shutters were cast in resin. I prepped those by giving them a coat of Clear Gesso. Then I painted the shutters and frames in a yellow watercolor from the Art Philosophy Pastel Dreams palette--the perfect color palette to match this collection! 

The Imperial Intricacy mould was cast in the Casting Mix and that was painted with the darker pink in that same watercolor palette. The nest was painted with blues and browns. I mixed the minty green paint with a small dab of brown to create a sage green for the leaves. The birds were blue with a bit of orange for the beaks and feet and brown for the eyes. The branch they sit on was browns and the flowers pink with brown centers. 

All of the moulds were dry brushed with Finn's Heavy White Gesso once the watercolors were dry. This will reactivate the watercolors a bit, so for a more stark white, dry brush on a second coat of gesso once the first coat is dry--the first layer of gesso should help lock in that watercolor a bit more. 

Once the mould on your papers are dry, line them up and hold them in place with some low tack tape. Add some stitching details by hand or with a sewing machine. Add your papers to the canvas with Finn's Soft Matte Gel. Then roll the torn edges of the yellow and floral papers up a bit for more dimension.

After your moulds are painted, add the Imperial Intricacy mould toward the bottom of the floral paper using Finn's Heavy Body Gel. If you cast this in Casting Mix, be gentle with pushing into place. The canvas will have give and if you push too hard, you'll break some of the pieces off. But if you do--no worries! Just make sure they are glued back into place. The breaks are often really clean and with everything else on top, you won't even notice. (I know from experience as I had a few breaks when I pushed a bit too hard on this.)

In order to achieve depth and layering without using a ton of flowers, I used a few tricks on this mixed media project! Memory Hardware Pearls are perfect for adding to the backs of resin mould casts to pop them up slightly. I used the Gilded set as the golden pearls blend in nicely with all the yellow on this project. I added the larger ones to the top of the back of the Ornate Legacy oval frame and then a smaller one to the bottom. This allowed me to layer the bottom of the oval frame over the Imperial Intricacy mould while keeping the top half level. I used hot glue to attach the large pearls to the back of the oval frame, then hot glue to attach the smaller pearl to the Imperial Intricacy mould. Then I added glue to all three pearls and gently pressed the oval frame in place. 

I added the square frame directly on top of the oval frame with hot glue. For the left shutter from the Among the Wildflowers mould, I used some smaller pearls to glue it to the inside edge of the square frame. The right shutter is offset a bit more. So to hold it up, I used an empty roll of Mint Tape to pop it up. To hide the roll, I covered it in a strip of leftover 12x12 paper using liquid glue. Then I used hot glue to add it to the canvas and then to also add the shutter on top of it. 

The nest on a branch mould got added to the left shutter directly with a bit of hot glue. I overlayed the birds on a cherry blossom branch by popping on a daisy flower from the collection and then gluing them to the flower's center with hot glue. I used a touch of foam adhesive on the back of the daisy to pop it up just a bit more so the 2 moulds were directly touching each other too much. The extra little flower from the bird mould got layered under the shutter and over the bottom of the square frame mould. 

Now for the flowers! I layered the larger yellow flowers, the daisies, the white and pink chrysanthemum-like flowers, and the tiny yellow and pink ones all over the project. I also tucked in some of the floral ephemera and some lace while adding flowers.

I took some of the tiny bee vellum ephemera from the collection and glued two together. Once the glue was dry, I bent up the top set of wings and added the bees to the project using a tiny square of black foam--make sure you add the foam to the black stripe of the bee's body to help hide it more. Then add a chipboard sentiment sticker to your project. 

Next, dry brush all of the flowers with gesso to match the shabby look of the moulds. I added a bit more gesso to the moulds where needed here as well. Once you are done adding gesso, glue some of the yellow pearls to centers of the large yellow flowers and add some of the gems from this collection! 

While Among the Wildflowers does have some sweet Easter elements, this collection is mostly a spring themed collection and I hope you got some wonderful spring project ideas and techniques from this tutorial. Until next time, happy crafting!

Adrienne

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Below are products that I used for this project.