Ornate Candlestick by Lori Woods

Hello creative friends and Happy New Year! 

My first Finnabair project for 2024 was to give a new look to an old candlestick that I had. I wanted to make it very ornate and rich looking so I used lots of mould pieces and waxes for decoration.

I used air-dried clay in the moulds so that the pieces would be flexible and could be cut and shaped around the candlestick before drying. I added extra texture using some pieces of lace and mini stones and painted everything with black gesso.

I wanted to give the candlestick a tarnished copper effect so I started with a base coat of purple metallic paint. I then used copper-coloured waxes to start creating the metal look. Jade impasto helped to give a patina effect in some areas and mint wax picked out details from the moulds. 

I hope this gives you some inspiration for finding new ways to decorate old objects and there's a video of the full process for you here:

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

The power of light by Kasia Salmanowicz

Welcome to the New Year!

I hope you are feeling great after Christmas. I come to you with an energetic canvas in expressive colours. It's full of various light bulbs. Maybe it will add some shine to me on these cloudy, grey days that usually occur in Poland at this time of year.

To create this project, a square canvas was used, along with a large light bulb made of HDF material, Finnabair cardboard, little light bulbs made from moulds and, of course, irreplaceable metal embellishments. I glued these elements using two types of gel - Heavy Body Gel and Soft Gloss Gel.

After drying, I covered everything with a thin layer of Clear Gesso and started colouring my project. I used Liquid acrylic Paints in four colours - Ink Black, Burnt Sienna, Tiger Orange and Carmine. All mixed with water gave a really interesting effect. Lots of white on this end.

Please watch the video tutorial on YouTube.

Have a nice day,

Kasia Salmanowicz

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

Finnabair 101: Resist Canvas

Hello creative friends! Have you ever tried Finnabair's resist canvas? It's a great versatile product that you can use with lots of different media on lots of different surfaces. I've created 3 tags here with Liquid Acrylic paints, Mica powders and Impasto paints, along with some Metallic Flakes, to show you just some of the possibilities!

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