Background Wall Art

This is my third attempt at creating a mixed media canvas to be used just as the background for something else. I'm trying really hard not to like it too much otherwise I won't want to cover up any part of it with other collage elements. 

Let me backtrack.  This all started one day when I was straightening up my art work area and sorting through some scraps of collage papers and materials. I came across a bunch of heart shapes I'd made or cut out of various papers or collage scraps.  I decided a pretty simple quick project would be to paint and embellish these hearts with reds and collage them to an interesting canvas background to hang on the wall someplace.

I had an in-progress (for two years) canvas that I had already covered with fabric scraps but grown bored of, that I decided to grab and paint, stamp, splatter, etc. to use as a background. Easy, just do something quick without much thought because most of it won't show anyway after I put the hearts on it. Problem is after I did all that random stuff I liked the results. I liked it so much I didn't want to put the hearts on it and it didn't really look like the background I was thinking of originally. It wasn't the right colors and there wasn't enough contrast.

So that background morphed into an art project of it's own.  I changed my approach and added some more specific paint elements and eventually called it done. Now I enjoy seeing it on the wall without red hearts.

After I finished that I still had those red hearts to put on something so I started another collage canvas. I put a bunch  random scraps of fabric on to another canvas with clear acrylic medium. The fabric doesn't show through the eventual paint layers much, if at all, but the cut edges and overlap of the fabric adds texture to the canvas. I decided to go with a different color scheme, yellow, this time because I wanted more contrast. I tried to keep it simple, but interesting, but boring at the same time so I wouldn't mind putting hearts all over the top of everything. That still kind of became a problem but my real problem was now I had too much contrast and when I auditioned the hearts on the new canvas all I could think of was Pepperoni Pizza!

That wasn't going to work at all. I didn't like it with hearts so I again added some extra splashes of color and haven't really decided what I'm going to do with it next, if anything, so I just hung it on the wall as well.  I may take it down at some point in the future and add something else to it, but for now this is what it looks like.

They say three's a charm so this is the one I will use with the red heart, I think, maybe....
I started with a larger rectangular canvas (I had too many hearts for the smaller canvas) and covered it with paper collage elements of maps, text and patten paper. I thought a pale blue and white mix background would give enough contrast but not be too glaring like the yellow "pizza' version of background.

I like how this looks but I like the collage canvas without the hearts as well.  It has a lot of interesting texture, color and patterns in it. I plan on scanning it because I think in can use it as a background in digital collages. I'm working on a fourth canvas now that is mostly white textures and patterns. You know what they say, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). That will be the one I use, definitely...