DecoArt Heritage Board

Heritage Board – Vintage Shabby

Ooooh squeal of excitement, I just had to let you know that I have been accepted as a member of the DecoArt Helping Artist Program.



Susan at Country View Crafts will soon be stocking some of the DecoArt range of paints and mediums and I will be incorporating them into my workshops. I am particularly excited about using the media range, but I also love the chalk paints and want to experiment more with these too.
My Heritage board today uses a number of DecoArt products.

If you know me you know how much I love using Vintage photos in my creations, I have some of my own family on my Mum’s side, I have a collection of free images on my computer and I love the Tim Holtz found ancestors and photo booth ranges.

I have begun making a series of Heritage Boards using some of these fabulous images that are available to us and using DecoArt products to create the back grounds and layers.

This board began by cutting a piece of greyboard (chipboard) to 14 x 22½ cms and giving it two coats of white gesso. When it was dry I stamped one of Tim’s distress damask stamps in Versamark and heat embossed using clear embossing powder – I wanted the white of the pattern to show through my next layer.

I then set about using phthalo green-blue and transparent yellow iron oxide fluid acrylics with lots of water to create this mottled/distressed background. I used brushes, wet wipes and my fingers as tools and I brushed, rubbed, daubed and splattered the paints until I was happy with the effects.

I couldn’t really use the heat gun here to dry my background as I would have re-melted the embossing powder and lost the definition of the design, so I left it for about 20 minutes and came back to it with a wet wipe and rubbed very, very gently over some of the embossed design to take the paint off of it and make it pop again. You can see the colours have blended into the background more. It’s important that you don’t rub the board itself or you could rub away the paints and spoil the watery effects.

I die-cut Tim’s ornate frame twice using thin greyboard and glued them together, gave it two coats of thin gesso and when dry I used a palette knife to scrape on some texture fierro which gives an iron like texture and colour. 

I left it for about 45 mins until dry and then gave it a coat of the media white crackle paint, however I really like the fierro showing through so I applied it quite thinly and therefore did not expect any crackles to appear. Fifteen minutes later and look what was happening, gorgeous fine cracks were appearing so I just left it to completely air dry.

I text stamped the background using potting soil archival ink and gave it all a coat of matte medium and let it dry.

I took my chosen photograph and adhered it to the backing panel that was cut from the frame die-cut and also let that dry before sanding and inking the edges. I then gave it a coat of decou-page to seal it.

Inbetween drying times I began adding charms, wooden and metal embellishments and some flowers to the board and left them to dry as well.

At this point I came back to the ornate frame and used a tiny amount of raw umber fluid acrylic to add touches to the outside and inside edges to vintage them just slightly.

Next up was to paint over the embellishments using white gesso.

Once the gesso was dry I sprayed on mustard seed, picked raspberry and gathered twigs distress spray stains and some water and let the inks run up and down the board. (Can't wait to get my hands on the coloured media misters). I started off the drying with the heat gun but only for a short while to get the board warm and then left it to dry on its own.

When dry I spent some time dry brushing the elements with gesso and different mediums like titan buff acrylic, black gesso, white crackle paint and brown fierro. All the lighter colours absorbed the colours of the inks so I also sprayed with the media white shimmer mister and added a very small amount of snowtex over the embellishments and I am quite please with the overall effects now it’s finished.

To finish off the board I altered some more embellishments, I just play with the paints, gesso and texture mediums to achieve a look I am happy with ......

.... a metal label pull and a metal number ......

.... a metal key .......

.... and a metal decorative bow for the top of the frame.

I love the brighter colours on the background compared to the very shabby vintage effects of the frame.

Thanks for taking a look today. Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx