6 Panel Art Project – Part 5

Last week my 6 panel project looked like this:

Everything was done except the tree on the light/daytime panels.

I’ve always wanted the tree on my daytime panels to be bright shiny silver.  I first planned to cut pieces of tin, but it was too sharp.  Then I contemplated using heavy duty tin foil, but it would have been too crinkly.  Abbie suggested applying silver leaf, which is super thin sheets of silver that you apply with special glue [just like gold leaf, but silver instead].  That sounded more difficult than I wanted, but I was going to borrow hers and give it a try.  But THEN I discovered liquid silver leaf and bought some on Amazon [#affiliate].  I also bought some inexpensive detail brushes so the leaf wouldn’t ruin my regular paint brushes.  I was super happy when I got home from work last Thursday and they were waiting on the doorstep:

      

I learned very quickly that it’s also very toxic [it can only be removed with acetone or xylene shudder].  After using it for a few minutes, even with the girl cave windows wide open & the ceiling fan on, I started getting a headache.  I grabbed my respirator for the duration:

But even with that on I could still smell the fumes.  NASTY!  Here are some progress shots:

       

And a before & after of 1 corner:

      

It took about an hour to paint the liquid leaf onto the 2 panels.  Here’s what they looked like when I was done [the little balls of light on the photos in this post are reflections from the disco ball in the girl cave window]:

       

Here’s what the 6 panels looked like when I laid them back on the floor together – the only panel that needed silver was the middle daylight one:

I would have painted all 3 but it was a work night and I wanted to eat dinner & relax with hubby downstairs.  Next up:  how things can go so wrong so quickly…

I’ll end this post with a shot of Birdie chillaxing and Franc exploring: