I love the idea of taking something vintage and reclaimed and turning it into something new and beautiful, a little like the Japanese Kintsugi tradition of using precious metals to turn broken things into works of art. Kintsugi makes the objects more beautiful than before.
 
Using reclaimed materials also means the piece is completely unique and cannot be replicated, this vintage slate lived many years looking at the sun and the stars and I wanted to create a feature out of it. The ivy I used as a reference is from a beautiful river bank near where I live.
 
I started by painting base layers in acrylic and then created depth and shadow by adding layers of oil paint to make it look almost 3D.  

Please note, there are 4 small holes (see close up picture) which were originally designed to hold this in place in it's previous life, but can now be used for hanging with or without wire. (The piece will be delivered without wire so you decide how you want to display it).