Layer by Layer #1

 A project for Country View Crafts 

September Challenge Layer by Layer  Part 1 

I have chosen the theme for September and I am challenging everyone to share projects that have been put together Layer by Layer. I asked for those entering to show how they add depth, texture, and complexity to their cards or projects by stacking elements like stamps, paint, paper, inks, pastes, rub-ons and ephemera etc. to add depth, texture and visual interest to their work. 

I chose to start it off by using my mini sketchbook where I have been creating small and quick projects to highlight layers and products 

Calm Lavender

1. Scrape some gesso thinly over the page.

2. When dry puddle some PaperArtsy paint (Sugar Plum and Blueberry)with water, puddle it around in one place and dry. Repeat with greens (Magic Moss and Granny Smith).

3. Stamp the stamps with embossing ink, cover with the embossing powder and heat set it.

4. When the card is cool  squeeze over a little white chalk paint (Snowflake) and  again spritz with water and rub it around, take heat gun and gently waft it over the surface not getting too close. Let it cool and repeat heating until it is almost dry, then take a wet wipe and gently rub over the surface to reveal a gorgeous muted background.

5. Stamp the drawn Lavender and leaves onto watercolour paper using Watering Can. Then puddle some of the leftover mauve and green paints over them. Dry.

6. Use a fine brush or a waterbrush to watercolour the stamped images using darker distress ink and oxides. Dry and fussy cut.

7. Add some rub-ons and stamping to the background and create your collage.

8. Lots of lovely layers that bring a project to life.

xx

Supplies 

Calm Lavender

Ranger Archival ink - Watering Can

PaperArtsy stamps - Alison Bomber - AB058, ABO47

Fresco Finish Paints - Blueberry, Snowflake, Sugar Plum, Granny Smith, Magic Moss

DIs - Peeled Paint, Rustic Wilderness, Villainous Potion

DOxides - Shade Lilac, Wilted Violet, Faded Jeans, Bundled Sage, Rustic Wilderness, 

Arden Rub-ons - Katie Pertiet Garden Chronicles.

White gesso

Embossing ink

In my garden - shabby panel

 In My Garden

The Great Outdoors CVC #2 July

Well I'm out and about in my garden for the second challenge for July at Country View Crafts and I've created another shabby panel. I also seem to have gone somewhat French (see later info in the post about this!) - that came about because Tim has some bee images that have been labelled in French, so I clicked with it and brought out a bit of school learnt French, but checked it on Google as well :0)

So in my garden I have bees and that was true when my Olive tree was flowering a few weeks ago - there were bumblebees buzzing away and flitting like mad from flower to flower. It surprised me because the flowers are so, so small! I have lots of flowers and bushes, I have raspberries, blueberries, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, runner beans, sweetcorn, roses, dahlias, fuchsias, hydrangeas and more - and I love it. I've also had lots of blackfly and slugs and snails, caterpillars, but very few butterflies and ladybirds sadly. 

Finished Panel

So the time to create this panel took longer than I had anticipated but read on and you'll find out why,

Process steps

Two pieces of paper adhered to card and brayered with white acrylic paint to tone it down.

Texture paste scraped through Tim's stencil for texture and left to dry. Water spritzed over the stencilling and walnut stain distress ink mixed with water on craft mat puddled through using a paint brush. Neat ink then painted over a few of the stencilled shapes to give variations of tones. Any puddled colour was splattered over, but most of it soaked in and can't really be seen.

Pieces for the focal point layers were collected together, much of it in bags as leftovers from previous projects. I keep lots of the bits and pieces to use for collages and toppers. The only things I had to do were stamp the bees (on leftover background) and create the text pieces on the computer. I also gathered a butterfly rub-on and embossed on vellum to add to the specimen slide.

The bees are stamped with an old Tim Holtz stamp mounted on wood. It was fabulous using it again and to give it an outing.

I layered up all the elements and lost the butterfly duh! But found a little one in the field notes snippets I could replace it with. Buuuuutttt .... I wasn't happy with it, there were imbalances - like the left side is so dark whilst the other side is very light, to me that took away from the focus of the bees and garden. So I had to have a play.........

This was what appeared. I got rid of the black flowers, added from the wildflowers dies and also added a ladybird peeking out at the bottom. Although there is a depth imbalance on either side now, I think I can live with that because now the whole piece is lighter and looks more like a garden.

Here you can see the contrasts and differences. I'm happy.

NEXT DAY

Is it a Bee or is it a Wasp?

I hadn't glued anything down before I went to bed and today everything changed!!! (Typically Me!!).

I brayered over the brown stencil texture to lighten it more, 

I didn't like the yellow on the bees (or wasps?).

Because I think this is more likely to be a wasp the French text seemed inappropriate so I made some in English.

I also stamped the panel mount with text from the Entomology set.

I added some snippets.

Now I'm even happier.

xx

Supplies

TH Sizzix dies - Specimen, Entomology, Wildflowers

TH Stampers Anonymous stamp - an old wooden stamp of a bee?, Entomology CMS328

TH Mediums - Collage Medium Matte

Th Distress inks - Walnut Stain, Wild Honey, Scattered Straw

TH Snippets - Field Notes, Curator

TH Small Talk stickers

White acrylic paint, White Gesso

Background papers and text - Tim Holtz and my own

Affirmations 1 - Distress vintage layers

Be Brave 

It's the end of January as I'm writing this, the weather has been wet, chilly and even freezing but today we had some sunshine , blue skies and temperatures up to 10 degrees, you could almost say balmy weather. January into february is my SAD time when I need some love, time-out, friendship and excitement. But there are many of us in this position so I am going to build a box of affirmations to cheer me up.

This is #1. Just a small card 12 1/2 x 7 cms, covered in papers and ephemera with distress texture paste (matte), scraped into the edges of some of the bits of card, finger rubbed and then some distress stains painted in to give it some depth.

I carried on adding some inks spritzes of water and layers of pencils until it was nearly covered, dried it, ........

 ...... and rubbed away with a wet wipe to expose some of the pattern and text from the original layers, again dried it and finger rubbed some white gesso to create some highlights.

I finished by splattering some white gesso and distressing the edges of the card and rubbing walnut distress stain over them.

Now the background is complete, let's gather the collage elements and adhere them together to complete the project.

xxx

Supplies

Random papers, labels and pieces of TH ephemera

TH - Distress Spray - Pumice Stone, Ground Espresso

TH - Distress Crayons - Walnut Stain, Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Hickory Smoke, Picket Fence, Pumice Stone.

TH - Ephemera

TH - Ephemera Snippets, Number Strips

TH - Distress Texture Paste - Matte

TH - Distress Ink - Walnut Stain

DecoArt Americana White Gesso

Scrap Collage Journal

 Using scraps from projects to create little collages.

Having spent a fair few days on creating six panels for my next workshop, using Alison Bomber's newest release of stamps, I needed a bit of a break. I have loved creating the panels and I'm really pleased with them but I felt I needed to design and create something small and more personal, just for me. Sitting right in view were a number of bits left over from my creative process, so I set about sorting some of the pieces I could use and also raided my collage tub to add to it and ......

...... Eh voila!

An inky scrap of card from the workshop collection of scraps plus the pressed foliage stamp that had been fussy cut, one of Alison's words snippet, an ephemera stamp in the right hand corner and a part of a delivered envelope I had saved in my collage pieces tub.

It was so satisfying getting something created in just over an hour rather than the days it takes me for much bigger projects. It's left me ready to do more ......

xxx

ORIGINAL

 A tag collage in my Mixed Media Collage art book.

The background was created with a dip, drip and dry process using Walnut Stain distress ink. The Salvaged Patina through a stencil.

The collage was built with layers of torn book papers, printed and stamped elements, hessian, thread, word sticker and washi tape.

The tag is one of 4 that were laid side by side and stamped together with a range of Tim Holtz stamps.

xxx

Revisiting old techniques - Water Distressed Layers

Here's another of my techniques and layer combinations using acrylic paints. I like to turn to these when needing some inspiration and I have been documenting them on media boards as a resource.

You will find them added to my Tutorials and step x steps page found on my sidebar.

This one - Water Distressed Layers - I taught at Ministry of Mixology in April 2019.

Process steps

1. Paint a coat of acrylic paint (phthalo green-yellow) and heat dry.

2. Paint a thickish coat of a different colour (I mixed PGY with some hansa yellow and titan buff) and splatter with largish water droplets. 

3. Start to heat the board but before the watery spots dry lay a piece of clean dry kitchen paper over it to absorb the water. It sucks up some of the paint that has mixed with the water and leaves these gorgeous splatter spots.

4. Repeat step two and three with a coat of another colour (I used the above colours with titanium white). 

5. Move straight onto step six or stamp some text first using archival ink.

6. Finally repeat steps two and three with titanium white. 

7. Finish with some brush splattering of the same colours (I used the last green that was still on my palette and added water to it).

You could leave the finished background looking clean or you could add a watery frame around it.

I'm loving making these technique boards into mini pieces of art.

xxx