Shimmer Dust Dolls by Melissa Struhs

I love when I just get to play and experiment, with no idea what you want to achieve. You can just lose yourself in the creativity and see what evolves. This canvas board project was something that I recently created for the Brisbane show and the Colour Blast booth.

It really helps to have brand new products that inspire you to try something new...and this time I played with all 6 Shimmer Dust colours.

If you haven't played with the Shimmer Dusts yet, they are just the sweetest little pots of goodness.

I like to spray some water into a small palette and then

add a small amount of the Shimmer Dust at a time with the tip of your paintbrush or palette knife

so you can create the intensity of colour you wish.

Mix the powder through really well.

You can use these as gorgeous colours to paint anything you like. I wanted to show the versatility of our new product line and gave each of these dolls bold hair and clothing.

After stamping the image onto watercolour paper, you can see the colour depth you can achieve as you continue to add more layers. Left to right...1 coat, then 2 coats and then 3 coats. You make any of these colours quite light or very dark. It is totally up to you.

I like to fussy cut for hours on end, so it didn't much matter how neat my painting was. I simply layered the clothes and hair over another image.

I tried every colour and created a doll for each one, but I still had lots of leftover colour in my palette and thought I would take it a step further.

I forgot to take a photo of adding gesso through a stencil to pop down a textured background on my canvas board. But once the pattern was dried, I hand painted some of the detail with a fine brush and allowed it to dry naturally. I loved the crisp look but took a risk...

closed my eyes, held my breath and sprayed the canvas board lightly with water. I love how the colour spread slightly and even intermixed with it's neighbours But still maintained a bold look where I initially added the colour. I was ecstatic with the result.

I felt quite brave at this point and sprayed a little more water. A heat gun could help with the drying time but in the end I left the canvas to dry for quite a few hours before adding

the matching dolls...(Left to Right: Sunflower, Lush and Candy)

layered below their matching sprayed colours (Left to Right: Velvet, Navy and Midnight)

I hope you have some of these in your collection of Colour Blast, if not pop over to the Colour Blast website 

to order yours today.

Till next time