Monolith

I loved the idea of the new Visible Image monoliths and couldn't wait to order a pack, along with some of their stunning new stamps. Here's what I did with the first one.

I primed each side and the base with gesso, let it dry, then sponged with acrylic paints using a make up sponge to create landscapes. On the butterfly side I used the edge of the sponge to make some little flowers, which looked lovely. However, when it came to stamping the images, I couldn't fit in the ones I'd chosen without covering up the flowers, and I also decided the colours didn't look right, so I covered them up again with more paint!

I was aiming for the mood of each side to be different but still to complement each other, and the flowers just didn't work. The beauty of using the acrylic paint is that it was easy to get rid of them! Because the surface of the MDF became a little rough as the fibres swell a bit when painted, it was tricky to get a good stamped image, and I had to go over them in places with some ink and a paintbrush.

The large bird and tiny bird (Leave Your Fears set) are both on the one stamp, but I wanted the tiny bird to be further towards the corner, so I inked and stamped the two parts separately. I used the tiny bird on the other side as well, again to tie the two sides together. The butterflies (one stamped over the other) are from the  gorgeous new Own Kind Of Beautiful set, which is my new favourite Visible Image set! All stamps I've used are by Visible Image. To finish it off I sponged around all sides with pigment ink.

Here's a close look at each side.

I really enjoyed making my monolith. Now what to do with No. 2.........