Serendipity Shrooms - Step-by-Step

My inspiration for this project was this piece of Batik fabric:
Loved the color scheme, but I wanted my mushrooms to be a bit artsier than just covered with fabric. Here's what I did:

Step 1. I doodled some mushroom shapes until I had three I liked. I cut out the mushroom tops and traced the shape as many times as I needed onto one side of a cork sheet. I did this so I would know how much cork I needed to cover. I then cut that portion of cork from the roll.

Note: If I were to do this again I would do all the artsy creating on some heavy duty paper and then adhere the finished product to cork, but I hadn't though the process all the way through yet. I just knew I wanted my shrooms to be made of cork.
Step 2. I loosely applied some gesso to the other side of the cork sheet. I did not try to cover the whole sheet, just portions. I knew that the spray ink used in the next step would look dark when it soaked into the cork so I wanted some white in the background to provide some lighter color tones. I did not let the gesso dry completely before moving on.

Step 3. I added several colors of spray ink, moving it around with a foam brush. The ink combined with the wet gesso and other ink colors for nice color gradation. I didn't let this layer dry before moving on either.

Step 4. I added pieces of torn scraps in the color scheme of the fabric. I glued them down with gel medium. I did not try to cover the whole background.

Step 5. I added torn bits of handmade paper. This paper is thin in places so it becomes translucent when applied with gel medium. Since my previous layers were still wet, the gel medium and handmade paper picked up a little bit of color here and there.

Step 6. I added torn pieces of the Batik fabric, again will gel medium. I layered some of the pieces of handmade paper over the fabric scraps. The frayed edges of the fabric pieces really added a lot of texture.

Step 7. I should've taken more photos. In this step I added glitter (just sprinkled randomly into the wet gel medium), paint (applied randomly with a brush), ink stamping (brown and dark blue), and paint stamping (copper).

Step 8. I sprinkled on watered down white paint and blotted for a not-too-bright look.

Step 9. I added embossed stamping in two colors (metallic blue and opaque aqua) and two motifs (grid and sketched circle) and I added Stickles. Note: embossing has a different look on fabric than on paper.

Here are some closeups:

At this point you could cut any shape out you wanted, or just frame it and call it good. Here's how my mushrooms turned out. For a last touch I mounted my mushrooms caps on another layer of cork:

This project was very therapeutic. It was very artsy without the pressure of a perfect finished piece. Because I was going to cut it into small pieces, the overall design didn't matter so much.

Happy creating!