Make your own background for CVC

I love to make my own backgrounds for projects and card making and I'm also loving making little media boards, experimenting with layers, textures and colours. Today though for my background I am playing safe by repeating one I did before Christmas on a much larger board that went to my friend Alison for her Secret Santa gift - which can be seen here, you will see the similarities on my small one.

I began by sanding the edges of the board and stamping using Tim's classics #13 set. Postmarks always make me think of trips and holidays so I chose that as my theme.

 

I added some crackle paste through a stencil and let it dry.

Once dry and beautifully and finely crackled I dipped it in tea dye and iced spruce distress stain and then just played with layers using white acrylic paint, white linen ink spray, gathered twigs splattered using a new splatter tool I just got hold of in hobbycraft and spritzes of water......

.... and finally dried it and distressed the edges blending in ground espresso DI. So although I started off by thinking I was going to repeat a background I had already done, in fact, like always, I went off piste and mixed things up a bit - but that's what following your muse is all about isn't it?

The embellishment trail started by making some rusty looking signs using an embossing folder, decoart media fluid acrylics and some metallic lustres. I didn't record the steps because I was just having fun with the products and the layers until I was happy with the overall effects but I know I used quinacridone gold, raw umber, paynes grey, prussian blue, sap green and titan buff paints with champagne ice and iced espresso lustres.

I chose this guy as my focal image because he looks as though he is dressed ready to embark on a long journey, perhaps on one of those huge ocean going liners or even an aeroplane that was becoming more popular. He was excited to be off to explore foreign lands, perhaps as an archaeologist dreaming of finding a new pyramid in Egypt or maybe dreaming of starting work at the British Museum, hoping to assist, organise or even take part in excavating expeditions.

 I had this green metal frame sitting on my desk so decided it would add tremendously to the masculine feel and set about altering it.
I covered the frame in a light coat of gesso and then random patches of white crackle paste (I think I kept it a bit too thin as not much crackling went on - but something to learn from). You can see the final results below.

 When the crackle hadn't worked for me I decided to add some sand teture paste and used the media acrylics when it was dry to create this very textured rusty look.

I set about making the rest of the collage elements ....

.... and creating the collage itself.

The rusty adventure sign worked really well....

... as did the background.

Once assembled all I needed to do was add a rusty wire hanger and hey presto another vintage, weathered mixed media board was born.

So this is my sample for the newest challenge for Country View Challenges - just click the highlighted words and you will be transported there.

Have a fabulous month.

hugs Brenda xxx