Dreamer of Skype Dreams

Last week three of us had a fabulous crafting day together on Skype. Nikki (aka Addicted to Art), Alison (aka Words and Pictures) and myself spent just over 5 hours creating a project with each of us giving the instructions for the process steps, taking it in turns. At the end we had the big reveal to see what each of us had created and oh boy they were so different.

Here is my sample - a 20 x 29 1/2 cm mdf board which is actually the base from my Mixology frame kit cut by Tando Creative. Nikki and Alison had extra large tags to use.
B = Brenda, A = Alison and N = Nikki

I'm giving you the instruction and what I did to interpret it.

B - Seal substrate with gesso

N - Use some texture paste any way you wish. - texture paste and stencil

A - Dilute one colour of paint and apply in any way you choose - I mixed titan buff on a foil palette, daubed it onto the background

B - Add crackle in anyway you want - I poured weathered wood crackle medium randomly over the background and then scraped with a palette knife and heat dried.

We decided we needed a bit of time to start to gather embellishments also giving time for the crackle to dry.

N - Add texture to one or more of the embellishments - I gessoed the dress form and added texture sand paste to it.

A - Add colour to one or more of your embellishments. - Taking the dress form I painted it with a simple rust technique (pounce raw umber, paynes grey and quinacridone gold, heat dry. Dip in watery washes of the same colours).

B - Create a panel to use in making layers - I used a piece of mountboard, sealed with gesso then gave it some watery dips in  burnt sienna, titan buff, raw umber and titanium white. Flicks of sap green then mixed with prussian blue and flicked as well.

N - Apply a coat of paint to the background any way you like. I took grey and white premium painting randomly over the whole surface but crackles didn't appear so I improvised and painted over the areas where the weathered wood was with white crackle paint. I had some lovely bits of mega crackle appear.

A - Time to stamp - Alison said 'it's in your hands' but pure stamping only over the background. - I had out some old but never used stamps. Taking an artstamp from carabelle studio 'une plume sur mon carnet' I used paynes grey acrylic paint to stamp with.

B - Dip, drip and dry watery washes. This is my most used technique and I simply used titan buff. 

N - Edge in whatever way you want. I blended ground espresso and spritzed water over then dried it three times. I then sealed with DecoArt matte acrylic spray.

A - Trial your composition and design and finalise embellishments.

B - Do an Alison and add some words.

N - Add a touch of metallic. I used gold metallic lustre on a number of the metal embellishments and painted it onto the dress part of the dress form.

A - Splatter. - I used watery titanium white and splattered all over the background before I glued my elements on.

I used a Tim Holtz frame and paper dolls and the panel became my background for it.

 You can just see some of the crackle in the background above the frame and on the right side edge.
I love how the texture turned out with the stencil design. Towards the end, to bring it to life, I just rubbed a ground espresso ink pad over the top of the raised modeling paste.

The penultimate  instruction from Nikki was to use metallic - at first she had said gold before making it broader so it would fit each of our projects - I continued with the gold as the line around the inside of the frame looks like an old gold colour. I think this really lifted the whole look and helped bring the embellishments together.

I found the dress form die-cut in a box and after the sand texture paste, the brown paints the gold also lifted the dress part and makes it stand out. The ribbon and bow cuts in half to take away some of the prominence it had.

Lastly I felt the overall design didn't quite balance  so I added a little tissue tape and remnant rubs (the stars) to achieve the composition I desired.

To see the other two projects please pop over to Nikki's blog - Addicted to Art and Alison's blog - Words and Pictures.

I didn't get much time for photos and don't have one of me or Alison - sorry Alison but here's a flavour of the day. We had chatty times, lots of laughter and some silences where we were concentrating hard on what we were doing. We also disappeared from screen when we needed to find something or wash something, it didn't matter, the whole day was brilliant.

 I love Nikki's face here enjoying the reveal at the end - that's Alison's project.

We already have another day booked so stay tuned for another Skype session in a few weeks.

 

xxx