Friday 3 June 2016

Texture paste for AVJ

Welcome to the first Friday in June and the start of another fabulous challenge at A Vintage Journey. The lovely Astrid is our host this month and she describes the theme thus -

"Use any kind of texture paste (home made, crackle, coloured or plain) on your projects. There is an endless variety available, so play, have fun and apply it to your heart's content. Use it through stencils, randomly or in whatever way you want, but remember it should be in one of the vintage; shabby; mixed media; art journalling; industrial or steampunk styles that we favour. Put on your mixed media hat and create some magic!"

For this project I decided to go shabby.


For the first layer I randomly applied some gesso with a dry baby wipe ...


... then I mixed some modeling paste to a thick creamy consistency, applied it with a brush and spritzed with water so that it dripped down the board. Once dry it didn't really give me the depth of texture I was looking for, but it was worth a try and certainly didn't do any harm.



Adding colour - colour mixing. 

This was the palette I chose to use and my college days of studying oils bears me in good stead for having a bit of experience to fall back on ...


... and here's the swatch card I made. By playing with blends I was able to personalise the colours to the shades I really wanted. It's impossible to tell you how much colour was added each time, it ranged from a touch of the wet lid when I opened it (ie pin prick size) to one or two drops from the bottle. The colours in the last column are the ones I used.


The colours were added one at a time with a brush, spritzed with water, allowed to move around and drip and then heat dried. By layering the colours like this you keep both the individual colour tones and the layered ones creating additional depth and interest.


Because there was texture beneath the colour I decided to highlight these in white by using titanium white and a small brayer .....


.... and then more fun with the DecoArt white crackle paste through some stencils, just look at the fabulous textures you get.


I wanted to highlight the word Cafe so I mixed some quinacridone magenta with white antiquing cream but it looked rather vivid and clashed with the more vintagey colours I had blended so I added a tiny amount of the green gold, oh my goodness I would never thought of adding these colours together to get this beautiful vintage rose colour. I replaced the stencil and painted it on, I also added some of  the rose with more white added and some green gold to the moroccan stencilled areas too. I had imagined colouring the cracks but I now wanted to leave it as it is so I decided that before I put the embellishments on I would give the whole board a coat of matte varnish to seal it.


Here it is with all the embellishments on ......


... and from the side - I added one of Tim's easel die-cuts so that it stands and can be used as a birthday card or just a celebratory piece of art.


Thanks for stopping by, for joining me on my own amazing creative journey and for all your wonderful comments. I just love reading them. I would also like to give a warm welcome to all the new followers who have joined Bumblebees and Butterflies and hope you enjoy my creations and process steps.


So will we see you at A Vintage Journey this month? There are fewer stipulations now in who can join in and as long as we can see a vintage; shabby; mixed-media; art journaling; industrial or steampunk genre then you're in and there are some fabulous prizes up for grabs every month. June sees Susan from Country View Crafts joining us again with a £20.00 voucher from her on-line shop.

Have a wonderful month, lets hope the weather is warming wherever you are in the northern hemisphere and that it's not getting too cold for you in the southern hemisphere.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

All paints and mediums are from the DecoArt media range.