3D pop Mini’s

I thought of a new idea a few days ago, and of course started experimenting with some mini canvases to see how I could get it to work.  I have some sheets of clear acetate that have various images printed on them, and my idea was to use a small square piece and adhere it, not straight onto the canvas, but by the corners in such a way that it would float just above the canvas.  As the acetate is clear, I couldn’t use foam dots or other things I’ve used in past to add dimension to my scrapbook pages- I had to get a little creative.

You can see the small silver nubs in the corners- I used some jewelry fastenings I had collected, cut them much shorter, and put them through the holes I had made in the corners of the acetate and through the canvas.  To get the acetate to “float” away from the surface, I used tiny eyelets between the acetate and the canvas, kind of like a washer, so that all the corners would be evenly spaced and secure.

The trickiest part was securing the back.  At first I tried to leave the jewelry fastenings long and simply twist the end.  Yeah, that was an epic failure.  Not secure at all- I couldn’t twist the wire without putting too much pressure on the canvas and making it warp.  So, I cut tiny squares of felt, and used gel medium to adhere them to the back of the canvas, over the holes I had made.  Once it dried, I went over the holes again and punched through the felt, and then I was able to put the fastenings through the back of the canvas and use more gel medium to secure everything together.  It was a lot easier and far more secure once I added the felt, giving the fastenings more surface area to adhere to.

I got pretty frustrated working on these, but once I figured out what worked it made the effort worth it. Now I can do something similar on larger canvases without wanting to pull my hair out.  Time to start shopping for some more acetate!