Revisiting old Techniques - Emboss Resist

I love this technique and have used it alot in the past but I thought I would update it to create a vintage shabby timeworn look.

Process Steps

1. Paint a coat of acrylic paint over the surface and dry - I used rust.

2. Stamp with embossing ink, cover with clear embossing powder and heat.

3. When cool paint over the entire surface with another colour, this time I chose ocean breeze.

4. Leave it to dry until it's just tacky to the touch then wipe over with a damp cloth to remove the paint from the embossed image. The harder you wipe the more you will reveal. If like me you are using something like greyboard that rubbed back to the original surface take the underneath color and with your finger fill in the rubbed out area and distress by dabbing it gently.

5. Give it a timeworn look by adding a couple of watery washes of rust and quinacridone gold and leave to dry naturally.

6, Sand the edges and rub around with brown or rust coloured permanent inks - I used coffee archival.

xxx

Supplies

Andy Skinner Creative Expressions - Artist Pigment Paint - Rust

Andy Skinner Creative Expressions - Matt Chalk Paint - Ocean Breeze

Andy Skinner Creative Expressions - Stamps - Old Seals, Create, Gypsie Queen,
Tando Creative - Media Board

Miscellaneous - Embossing ink, embossing powder

A shorter Skype session with friends - mixed media board

Last Saturday my great skyping buddies Nikki (Addicted to Art) and Alison (Words and Pictures) and I met together for a short, just for fun 'do what you want', session to keep our hand in with creating and making and at the same time had a lovely catch-up.

I decided to use four words to work with that come from the first four days of the Creative Expressions FaceBook Mixed Media Mayhem challenges for May. Bright, Crackled, Stencilled and Distressed.

I created a background of brayered layers of Andy's chalk paints and white gesso adding in some stamping (that more or less got covered up :o) ).

The CREATE was stencilled using white texture paste and when perfectly dry I replaced the stencil and dabbed some of the chalk paints over it to help it blend with the background and outlined it with white posca pen. 

I painted the industrial wing with the  mustard and ocean breeze paints, let it dry then scraped some clear crackle glaze in random places. When that was dry I painted on white antiquing cream, left it to dry and rubbed away to reveal the cracks. Next I stamped with the grey haze.

A small round circular piece of Tando greyboard was painted with grey haze and titanium white paint mixed and Andy's eye transfer rubbed on.

The flaming heart was painted with grey haze, wash od the haze and white dabbled on, stamped with white tinting base and then splattered with ocean breeze and haze mixed.

I just used my fingers to add layers of the paints to the ring and splattered with grey haze.

      

Once put together =

It would be great if you popped over to see the other two projects - we had no theme this time - just to do what we liked, so these are very different. Here are their sneak peeks.

Nikki

Alison

xxxx

Products used

Andy Skinner Chalk Paints by Creative Expressions - Ocean Breeze, London Brick, Grey Haze, Mustard Seed.

Andy Skinner embellishments by Tando Creative - Industrial Wings, Flaming Heart

Andy Skinner stencil (Inspire) and stamp (Create)

Andy Skinner Transfers - Poe Diversity

DecoArt - Clear Crackle glaze, White Gesso, Tinting base, White Antiquing Cream, Titanium White Media acrylic paint

Media board for Andy Skinner

I have been having fun with chipboards for this project. I love layering up greyboard shapes but sometimes they end up protruding too high especially if you want to use some in a journal or on media boards. So for this project I have soaked some of my Andy greyboard shapes and pulled them apart and it's amazing how you can then play with distressing the layers of the greyboard and even get to put some back together again to create different shapes as I have done here.

I am using a piece of greyboard cut to the size I want as a page for the Andy book I am making.

Process Steps

Paint the greyboard with gesso but do not have too much on the brush so that this almost becomes a dry brushing technique.

Repeat with cerulean blue and prussian blue keeping the edges darker.

Scrape over some gesso with a palette knife keeping it horizontal to the board and getting a distressed look. Dry.

 Repeat with some white crackle paste and this time leave to dry naturally.

Take your chosen greyboard shapes and soak the ones you want to split into thinner pieces and distress. These can be dried with a heat gun.

I split the industrial wings into 4 pieces and took the two thinnest ones for this project. When they were dry I glued them together to create a new shape with a hole in the centre and decided to use a retro palette for the rest of the colouring up.

When they were dry the small rectangle and the heart got a coat of quinacridone red and a wash of carbon black over them.

The industrial wings had cobalt teal hue, titan buff, a tiny amount of yellow oxide stippled over them then a random wash of red iron oxide.

Back to the backboard now it's dry and cracked. Mix a watery wash of turquoise blue hue and prussian blue, paint it over and rub away immediately with a piece of dry kitchen roll. This takes the edge off the white and tones it in with the colours we originally used. It also gives us some nicely defined cracks. Seal it now with a coat of matte varnish.

Use transparent red iron oxide and yellow oxide washes to layer more colour over the background. Dry between each layer.

Use paynes grey as a thick wash to go round the edges use a water spritzer and heat gun.

Stamp the words, add your chipboards using heavy gel medium and finish them with a coat of matte varnish.

It didn't quite look finished to me so I added a few remnant rubs, then I was happy.

The colours are pretty good too. It's not a palette I've used before but I'm loving the retro feel to it.

I'm sharing a shorter version of this over on Andy's blog today for my April DT piece.

xxx

Supplies

Andy Skinner stamps - Stampendous - Curiosity and Unexplained

Andy Skinner greyboard shapes - Tando Creative - Industrial Wings, heart and miscellaneous pieces from kits.

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - cerulean blue and prussian blue, quinacridone red, carbon black, cobalt turquoise, transparent red iron oxide, titan buff, yellow oxide

DecoArt Media Speciality - white gesso, white crackle paste, matte medium, heavy gel medium, ultra matte varnish

DecoArt Media Team - Fabric Journal

I have a post live today on the DecoArt Mixed Media Team Blog which includes these lovely little pages from a brand new Tando mini album.

I'd love it if you could pop over to see how the album came together and leave me a little love over there. Thank you.

I'll be back tomorrow with a project on the Andy Skinner blog too. It's busy, busy, busy!

hugs Brenda xxx

Mixed Media Winged Heart Tag

I made a heart tag for my first DT sample as part of the Andy Skinner Creative Team for 2019, well it is Valentine's Day coming up fairly soon.

Process steps

1. Take tag and give it a random coat of white gesso.

2. Paint dark grey acrylic paint mixed with a little water over the whole tag. Rub most of it away with kitchen paper and a babywipe if you want to remove more.

Use a small palette knife and scrape some white gesso lightly and randomly over the surface keeping the flat of the palette knife level with the tag. Dry and then repeat again over the same sort of area as you just did. This is to build a little more texture into the background.

Mix a little dark grey 50:50 with glazing medium and paint over the tag and gently rub back with dry kitchen roll and a babywipe.

Mix a little quinacridone gold with water, dribble on one place spritz with water and move around and dab some off with dry kitchen paper before drying. Repeat in another couple of random places.

Mix a little paynes grey with water and dribble around the edges, spritz with water and dry. I worked on about a 2 inch spread at a time.

Taking Andy's stencil and a 50:50 mix of modeling paste and gesso add the number and motif to the background.

Scrape what is left from the modeling paste/gesso mix to a torn piece of media card. Leave it to dry then colour up as we did on the background. Gather some torn muslin and little bits to create a collage ....

.... and stamp Andy's winged heart on patterned paper and cut it out.

Assemble the collage layer ....

.... and it was here I decided to stamp the specimen number - I used the stamp platform and stamped three times with black archival ink to get a good sharp image.

I so enjoyed making this tag. I think it's going to be a quinacridone gold year for me.

xxx

Supplies

Andy Skinner - Stencil - French Elements

Andy Skinner - Stamps - Handle With Care and Skuldoggery

DecoArt - Media white gesso, Americana glazing medium, Media white modeling paste
DecoArt Media fluid acrylics - dark grey value 3, quinacridone gold, paynes grey

Tando Creative - Size 8 greyboard tag

Happy Halloween

I have a post over on the Tando blog today sharing photos of a recent workshop I taught at Country View Crafts of a Halloween Triptych I originally made last year for the DecoArt Mixed Media blog.

If you would like to see how a fabulous group interpreted my boards please pop over here to the Tando Creative blog to see the results.

I hope today is full of treats and no tricks.

hugs Brenda xxx

Backward, turn backward,

Time, in your flight

make me a child again

just for to-night!

Elizabeth Akers Allen

Tando - Anything Goes - Acrylic Pour - Give Away

For my 'Anything Goes' sample over at the Tando Creative blog I have used one of the pieces from my first ever experiments with the new DecoArt Pouring Medium.

There are some videos available to see on the DecoArt blogs here, here and here and of course google or search acrylic pours and/or look on youtube for ideas and help with techniques.

Process Steps

I chose my colours ....

.... and mixed them with the pouring medium. I then carefully tipped them into one cup to make a 'dirty pour'.

I tipped it upside down on the substrate.

This was the result. I decided it was rather sea like so that became my theme.

Next I stamped and masked the bottom of the tag using some Andy Skinner stamps  (Fossils) ...

... and added a little colour using the media fluids and a little tinting base.

I found a painty scrap of card and stamped the gorgeous octopus from France Papillon's Illusionary Artists Creepers and Crawlers set and added some white paint spots then gave it a wash of paynes grey.

It was here I decided to test out the clear modeling paste and the faux encaustic look and scraped some over the top of the tag and embedded the octopus into it. I also added some small flat backed glass cabochons. (sorry photos went missing).

I had used distress ink to edge the jelly fish and I love how it moves with the wet modeling paste to create a sort of shadow around the creature.

I added some remnant rubs and I carved the word 'sea' with a pencil then inked it with a black posca pen. I could have given this another coat of the modeling paste here but decided to leave it as it is. So with a painted vintage brad and some baker's twine it finally came together.

The creature looks suspended over the background which is precisely the look I wanted.

I'm really pleased with the look again of this acrylic pour and faux encaustic piece of art. 

What do you think?

Before I go ...............

Thanks to the lovely people at DecoArt I have a set of the fabulous Fossils stamps to give away.

Leave a comment below and you will be entered into the random org draw. The closing date is Saturday 1st September at midday BST and the winner will be announced on Monday 3rd September.

Good luck.

xxx