ATCs - experimenting with fluid acrylic layers with glazing medium

Every Sunday I receive an email letter from the very talented Shawn Petite. I subscribed quite some time ago as I have been fascinated by her grungy, mixed media paintings and the layers she includes. Shawn is a member of the DecoArt Media Team with me and I love seeing her projects and articles/videos, they are so interesting and informative. You can find Shawn's website here to see her blog, inspirational art and free resources.

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I was feeling rather lack lustre the day I worked on this couple of ATCs. I had started to prepare them before Shawn's newsletter arrived, so I thought I would use some of her steps to get me into a groove. Here's my version.

Process steps

 Begin by brushing some gesso lightly over the card don't worry if it doesn't seal everywhere. 

Mix some DecoArt modeling paste and white gesso together and scrape through a stencil, leave to dry.

Drag some white crackle paste over randomly and again leave to dry.

Mix some raw umber with glazing medium and paint all over the substrate and wipe back with a damp piece of kitchen paper.

Repeat the last step with prussian blue hue.

Repeat again with burnt umber to get a lovely vintage hue.

To bring in some colour mix some raw sienna and hansa yellow medium to any left over burnt umber and repeat this step again. (See the right hand sample).
Or mix some quinacridone magenta with burnt umber and the glazing medium to repeat. (See the left hand side sample).

Then to get some white back on the raised stencil texture gently knock it back by rubbing over with a cloth dampened with surgical spirit.

Drip some quinacridone gold watery paint onto the backgrounds and spritz lightly with water allowing the paint to move around and pool in the recesses. Dry.
Distress the edges.

So I was really happy with my experiments seeing how grungy I could get the effects but I think I will stick to only two layers if I create something more shabby in the future. It's all a big learning curve when you are experimenting with something new.

So to finish and get these into my altered book journal I just created a couple of layered collages and added a photo booth pic and a vintage paper doll.

I you haven't heard of glazing medium you can add it to paints for more transparent layering effects and of course by rubbing it back you can create some fabulous cracked paint looks. I think you'll be seeing me using this technique a bit more in my projects.

You'll probably also see me using surgical spirit to rub acrylics back as well. I love it when I've learnt something new.

My thanks to Shawn who shares her inspiration, ideas and creativity so freely and if you pop over to her blog you can see her posts and videos here.

xxx