Mixed Media Collage: Spring Blooms

Remember the seadbird mixed media collage I did here? Well I loved that thing so darn much that I couldn't way to do a larger collage, I started this one right away...in NOVEMBER. OF LAST YEAR. Needless to say I hit a bit of a road bump & it's been sitting half done on my craft shelf mocking me for the last 3 months. This past weekend I decided to jump back in & tackle it.

The entire painting is made of a canvas, acrylic paint, tissue paper & mod podge. I can't really give a tutorial because a lot of it is just feeling out as you go along with the tissue paper but I can show some pictures of the painting along the way...After painting the background I started making the trunk out of plain tissue paper & mod podge, I just twisted strips, dipped them in a little podge & shaped them to the canvas. After it was dry I painted it a few shades of brown & then added a some bronze highlights to give it a subtle sheen. Then came the blooms...This is where I got stuck, I wanted to do hundreds of these little wads of tissue paper with the intention of them being tons of pink blooms. They ended up looking like pepto bismol spit wads.

That's when I remembered I had this great hot pink tissue paper with a black toile design on it from Urban Outfitters. (they wrap your purchases in it, I didn't actually buy it, well, not technically) Using small pieces & a TON of mod podge I squished it all around the branches until I had a nice full tree.The painting is based on this tree in our yard, it's my absolute favorite. When it blooms it looks like the entire yard is sprinkled with cotton candy!