Make your mark by Aleksandra Mihelic

Hello dear Finnabair fans and friends. I hope this post finds you well. I’m here on the Finnabair blog today with you again and I prepared for you an inspiration and a tutorial in a shape of an altered Horseshoe. I love horses! When I was a child, I always wanted to take riding lessons, but didn’t get the opportunity. Some of my class mates had horses at home. I remember one of them once hitting me so so hard, because I was standing to close to his back and he was feeling uncomfortable. I had my leg blue, black and red for quite some time. But that didn’t take away my love for these beautiful animals. When I was already grown up, I just came out of a hard relationship, with my heart completely broken and shattered into pieces. And this was the moment I decided I will make my childhood dreams happen and learn how to ride a horse. And I did it. I still remember those days and those moment spent with my horse with such fondness and so much joy in my heart. 

This beautiful chipboard Horseshoe imitation was laying at my desk for some time, waiting for the inspiration that would be worth of it. Lately I have tendency to make my projects in a natural brown colors, but kind of light colored. And this is the way I “shaped” my today’s Horseshoe also. I guess also the use of the colors with me kind of changes with my life, with my mood and with the things that are happenning in my life, making it sometimes more and sometimes a bit less happy... like in lives of us all.

I first glued all the embellishment on my Horseshoe shape. I was using some on the gorgeous “Dusty Attic” chipboard pieces and lots of Finnabair Mechanicals. In the next step I added some Finnabair Graphite texture paste on some parts of my project, to add some texture and interest to my project. After the texture paste was dry, I covered everything with a coat of Heavy White gesso, using dry brush. When the gesso was dry, I added some oily and rusty coloring with Finnabair Liquid Acrylic paint “Burnt Sienna”. On top I added some shading with new Finnabair Matte waxes – Brown Rust, Red Rust and at the end Old White instead of dry brushing my project with gesso. 

I also prepared a video tutorial that you can find on Finnabair studio youtube channel.

I hope you liked my today’s inspiration and I hope that it maybe brings out some of your happy childhood memories too.
Enjoy your days!
Hugs, Aleksandra

Products I have used - all the images linked to Mixed Media Place online store: