Masquerade Art Deco Canvases Project by Sarah Donawerth

While trying to fuse together Ingrid Pomeroy’s postcards and the chipboard masks for a Halloween project, I was struggling to find my artistic perspective. I felt like the materials were perfectly suited for each other, but couldn’t find a way to make them work with the Halloween theme. Instead, the materials kept screaming that they wanted to be art deco and slightly quirky, so I followed the muse and it led me to these beautiful canvases that are so quintessentially my style that I can’t believe I ever struggled to create these.

Masquerade Art Deco Canvases Project Directions:

Select the images you would like to use from Ingrid Pomeroy’s postcards and pair them each with a chipboard mask. Trim the image to fit your wooden trays. For an art deco look, trace a circle around the top half of the woman (I used the inside of a roll of duct tape to trace) to give the illusion of the sun, which is a popular art deco motif.

Enamel the chipboard masks with German Silver Relique Powder. Hold the heat gun close to the masks for a more textured finish.

For the large wood substrate, cover with crumpled book text and glue down with gel medium. Brush Frayed Burlap Distress Spray Stain on the edges from opposite corners. While ink is still wet, blend some of the turquoise gelato stick into the stripe.

Using the Tim Holtz Pocket Card with music print, trim to fit between stripes on canvas, then color gold gelato stick around edges and blend with a makeup sponge. Edge the card with brown ink. Attach to canvas with gel medium.

Apply gel medium in to the circle around the woman and roll the edge in vintage gold glass glitter.

For the small wood substarte, apply a thick layer of light modeling paste across the entire surface. Then stipple the paste by tapping your palette knife straight up and down. Then, just barely skim the surface of the paste to create a textured background.

Once dry, color with metallic gelatos and blend the gelatos with water (Note: if the paste becomes mushy again, use a heat gun to speed the drying time and make the gelato blending more manageable). Adhere the postcard image with gel medium and attach the mask. Add vintage gold glass glitter to the corners.

Glue mask to woman’s face and attach to the canvas.

Apply Relique Powder to garment studs, heat set, and glue these in the corners of the canvas.

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