Monday 18 February 2019

Pitted Enamel Surfaces for DecoArt

Hi it's Brenda here with you today. Back in September I revamped a small panel I had made way back at the beginning of the year and used the 'pitted enamel surfaces' technique to age it a bit more and to seal the surface. I then used it for the front cover of a hand made / hand bound sketch book / journal. You can find that post at Bumblebees and Butterflies - here.


This technique is not brand new and has been around for a while but I have been honing it to use with my fluid media acrylics and mediums.

I got so into it I researched different metals and made a swatch for each one using different colours of media fluid acrylics, metallic paints and some texture sand paste. Let's take a look.

Pitting is a form of corrosion and Wikipedia states that pitting corrosion, or pitting, is an extremely localized corrosion that leads to the creation of small holes in a metal.

Pitted Transparent Enamel
(Enamel is a natural form of quartz. In simple terms, enamelling involves a glass paste being applied to metal and then heated to fuse it to the surface. The finish of the enamel can be translucent or opaque depending on the temperature used to melt the glass. Higher temperatures result in a more transparent and durable enamel while lower temperatures give a more opaque and fragile surface.)
Create a surface that you want to be covered in clear enamel. I chose a piece left over from a previous experiment to use - shown below.



Pitted Surfaces Method
1. Pounce an embossing ink pad all over and cover with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE).

2. Use a scrunched piece of dry paper towel and a small dry paintbrush to remove some of the UTEE to leave some holes or pit marks - tap off the excess.

3. Heat emboss.

4. When cool, rub some Raw Umber/Paynes Grey/Dark Grey/Black paint over and when it is almost dry wipe over with a babywipe to reveal the dark pits in the surface. 

5. When dry repeat step 4 again.

I used Dark Grey Value 3 for the pitting.



Pitted Coloured Enamel
(To give enamel a particular colour, a certain number of special coloured components (pigments and dyes) have to be added. With these, almost any colour can be achieved.)
To begin paint the substrate with any colour you like - with Christmas coming up I used Pyrrole Red.
Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.


This would look great die-cut or stamped and cut out as a pillarbox methinks.


Pitted Gold 1 and 2
To start the first swatch paint the surface of the substrate with gold media acrylic paint.
Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.
I used Raw Umber on the gold.


To start the second swatch paint the surface of the substrate with texture sand paste and dry it. Then give it a coat of gold media acrylic paint.
Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.
Again I used Raw Umber on this one too.


You can see how the sand texture paste added a different texture in places. Variations will occur depending how much of the UTEE you remove before heating it. This next photo shows how much paint I spread on the surface and let almost dry.



Pitted Brass 
For step 1 paint the surface of the substrate with a mix of gold and raw umber media acrylic mixed together. 
Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.
I used raw umber on the brass.


Pitted Silver
For step 1 paint the surface of the substrate with silver media acrylic. 
Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.
I used Carbon Black on the silver.


If you have got any of the DecoArt metallic paints you can try any type of metal finish you want.

Pitted Pewter
Here's a swatch using the Extra Sheen metallic paint in Pewter with Paynes Grey pits.



Pitted Rose Gold
Here's a swatch using the Extra Sheen metallic paint in Rose Gold with Black pits.


I hope these help with any metal embellishments you want to alter or maybe even just create some backgrounds.

You can also find this post over on the DecoArt Mixed Media Blog where I also added a Christmas card with gold and silver pitted bells.

Thanks for stopping a while and .....
xx