This past weekend I put on my first chocolate tasting party. I am trying out being a “Dove Chocolate Discoveries” chocolatier. I made this for my hostess.
It only took about an hour to put together. I started with a 2 x 2 inch canvas. I drew the heart with Inktense pencils, then smeared the color with a watery brush. The blue is acrylic craft paint. The dots are metallic copper craft paint.
The hardest part was putting the ribbon on. (The ribbon came from Dove Chocolate Discoveries.) I used an artist’s quality glue to start with, but it just wasn’t sticking. Then I got out a jar of Golden Acrylic Gloss Medium (after finding that the lid of the jar of matte medium is permanently affixed – damn!). I smeared that on with a palette knife. That seemed to work better although it still took a tremendous amount of time to dry.
I didn’t put any varnish on it, and there are a couple of messy shiny places where my medium coated fingers accidentally strayed to touch the front. I decided that added character. I don’t know how I would have varnished it for sure. Probably sprayed it with fixative (which would have darkened the pink ink – not good) and then sprayed some varnish on. I didn’t really want to darken the colors, though.
