Starting to pick out accents on Wall Hanging

This project is going a little better than the other one.  At this stage I am experimenting with picking out some of the different lace in different colors of purple to see how they look.  It doesn't look unified yet. 

One thing that is surprising me about this piece is how I am NOT really liking the dark purple peeking out from behind the lace.  It is more "drastic" than I planned, and because it doesn't have iridescence, it looks like black holes or something behind the lace pieces.  But I think I have some ways I can tone that down.  Here's an overall view:

Next I have included a couple of closer-up views:

Now, clearly this needs more work, but it is coming along.  I thought that I needed to accent the skinnier lace, but I think I need to accent the flatter, wider lace as well.  For the next round, I think I will accent that as well, but I will probably apply the paint lightly with a finger rather than a brush or a round foam applicator for a lighter touch.  In previous pieces the effect has been too "heavy" with this type of lace.  The holes inbetween are quite large.

Also, this stage is where I encountered the difficulty with the dark purple being a distraction to the piece.  I decided to do two things:  (1) Apply a glitter spray to see if that masked the lack of iridescence in that layer, and (2) Try the wash again, but a really weak one.

The glitter did just about nothing.  Don't take me wrong, I like glitter, but it didn't help in this case.  I'll be painting over most of it and will have to re-apply it later.  Oh well, nothing was messed up, anyway.  No biggie.  

The wash actually helped a little.  I made a REALLY weak one because I was spooked about what happened last time, but I think I made it a little too weak.  I did  the weak wash with Halo Violet Gold so I wouldn't mess anything up by it being too dark.  If anything, I erred on the light side, but at least I didn't hurt anything.  The downsides were that it took a long time to do because there is so much texture on this piece and it took a long time to dry.  But overall I think the piece does look more unified now.  I don't have a photo of that yet--I'm planning to wait for daylight tomorrow.  

Major lesson learned:  Lay down a layer of iridescent paint before I lay down lace.  I didn't here because of the large area--I was concerned with how much paint it would take.  I thought it would work to have just a good color.  Nope.  Next time I'll know better.

I am, on the other hand, really liking the scrim background "stripes" on this piece.  I think it gives the piece a lot more interest than a plain background (like the Battenburg piece).  I plan to try this method again, along with another one that I have up my sleeve.

Oh, a small bummer--the small butterflies I ordered are a teeny bit too large for this piece.  Oh well, that just means I can use them for something else!  I'm mentally planning a series of smaller pieces.  But, later!