Rusty patina effect using Tim Holtz products

When I posted my June Tim Tag with the rusty patina tarnished trophy I promised a tutorial as to how I achieved the effect using Tim Holtz products. So here goes.

This was inspired by Kate from Lindy's Stamp Gang and her faux verdigris or patina background  - I used her method but swapped in Tim's products. This technique enabled me to use up some of a forest moss distress stain that has gone dark brown with perfect bronze perfect pearls and a drop of water in a mister. 

Spray card with mister of home made glimmer mist making the card really quite wet (the card I use seems to have a coating to it and will withstand lots of wet and painty layers). Add some salt crystals and heat dry slightly.

Spray with gathered twigs distress stain.

Drip in some drops of evergreen bough distress paint and spritz blobs with your home made mister.

Repeat with blck soot distress paint and dab on some kitchen toll to lift some of it if it is too intense.

Spritz more home made mister and dry.

This is from ther first piece I made for the cup above.

This is the piece I made for the tutorial - you can see you will never recreate exactly the same again. This one has much more of a 'bloom' to it created by the misting of the evergreen bough distress paint.

Next I wanted to try to achieve a silver/galvanised effect so I followed the same steps but used the brushed pewter distress spray stain and spritzed with water adding more brushed pewter and a little weathered wood spray stain with drops of  evergreen bough and hickory smoke and when partially dried I added a quick spray of brushed pewter again.

This is what it looks finishing off drying with the salt granules still in it.

Next I wanted to try rusted tin. A spray of hickory smoke which has a decidedly mauve hue to it when wet but dries to a lovely gun metal grey.

Added a spray of pumice stone but the darn thing has turned green - grrrrr so annoying when that happens. So I blotted off as much as I could and dried it.

Next came some random sprayed brushed pewter and some black soot, dried partially with then another spray of brushed pewter

I wanted to add some rust so I sprayed firstly with walnut stain, the colour didn't stay very well so I repeated with vintage photo and its as if the brushed pewter absorbs the other colours - it really looks much greyer than this in real life.

So having found this photo of a rusty tin watering can ....

.... I got out the distress paints, walnut stain, gathered twigs and vintage photo and stippled it on in areas but still not the effects I wanted so I grabbed the gesso, took a small amount and sprayed vintage photo into it then stippled that over the top of the distress paints and whilst still wet sprayed more vintage photo over it - as I was drying it I noticed how it lost its brightness and became dull so I sprayed again and left it to dry naturally, but that didn't work either.

After several layers of stippled distress paint and stains and then sprays of rusty hinge and vintage photo I desperately wanted to capture this 'wet' look which highlights the deeper rusty colours ...

so I spayed once more with rusty hinge and whilst wet I also sprayed  a gloss varnish, dried and repeated with vintage photo. Now there is much more of a silvery/galvanised shine as well as a deep, vibrant and rusty effect.

So now here is my rusty watering can, I feel a tag or card coming on.

 I hope you can make sense of all the products and stages with this tutorial, it shows what didn't work as well as what did and that's all part of the experimenting, trialling and achieving what you want (or not lol).

Enjoy your crafty endeavours.

hugs Brenda xxx