CVC Challenge February 2025 #3 - Romance and Friendship

Happy Valentine Day 

I am sneaking in a third project for the CVC February challenge which is a last frame and this one is made for my 6 year old grandson who wants to be an Astrologer. I picked out what are the nearest products I could to fit in with his story and this theme.

I began by taking these metal elements found in my supplies and used the shown products as a play time to give a rusty look to them. Cogs and gears to represent machinery, spectacles because he loves Harry Potter, a compass to help him look in the correct direction when looking for stars and planets with his telescope and propellor as he also has a love of aeroplanes. (I just couldn't fit his love of lego into this project but he's a genius with it).

For the background I used the gears embossing folder and swiped the rusty ginge embossing ink pad over to create a rusty look but as always with me everything changed as I played with different products in the process of creating the layers.

I can't honestly say what I did for each layer to end up with the design below but I had fun.

These are all the products I used and there must be at least another 4 layers on top of the rusty hinge that I started with. It certainly doesn't look like I expected it to but just experimenting always takes you down a different path and that's the excitement of it all.

Things came together well as I collected together elements to sit in the ledge at the bottom of the frame. and added words to bring it all together.

A couple of bulbs to light his way, clock gears and clock hands in the bottles represent time, time he spends creating things (he loves his arts and crafts), time he will spend gazing up at the night sky. (I already have a fabulous photo of him out one clear evening last week where he was looking for the alignment of the moon with Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars). Spectacles to represent his love of the Harry Potter books, and hearts for Valentine's day.

I made up small labels to add to those bottles, bulbs and heart.

xx

Supplies

TH- Distress Spray Stain -Faded Jeans,Stormy Sky

TH - Distres Spritz - Uncharted Mariner, Vintage Photo, Crackling Campfire

TH - Distress Inks - Faded Jeans, Rusty Hinge, Uncharted Mariner

TH - Collage Medium, Crackle Paste

TH Foundry Wax - Statue

TH Embossing folder - Blueprint and Gears

DecoArt Fluid Acrylics - Quinacridone Gold, Prussian Blue Hue

All & Create Rub-ons - Acid Blends, Wanderlust Passport

Observations Gather Moments - Media Tile

Inspired by Sid Dickens

Another media tile.

Process Steps.

1. Seal the board with tinting bse.

2. Use the black side of some blending foam and add some gesso to a texture stamp, press it hard onto the surface of the tile.

3. Paint some washes of paynes grey, medium grey, transparent red iron oxide (TRIO) and white.

4. Brayer a thin coating of raw umber over the surface until happy with it.

5. Brayer raw umber and TRIO, using only the edge of the brayer, around the edges.

6. Sand the edges and dip in watery raw umber before finger rubbing neat quin gold or TRIO and paynes grey around to match the colours on the front.

7. Use paper covered wire (from floristry departments) and finger paint above colours over it.

8. Take metal word band and alter with paynes grey, TRIO and titan buff.

9. Find a metal insect and also alter like the word band.

10 Assemble adding some transfer/rubon words.

11. Frame it.

xxx

Supplies from DecoArt

White Tinting Base

Media Fluid Acrylics - Paynes Grey, Medium Grey, Transparent Red Iron oxide, Titanium White, Raw Umber, Titan Buff.

Faux gold leaf? - Metals for A Vintage Journey

It's the first Friday in July and the start of a new challenge at A Vintage Journey.

This month we would like to see some kind of precious metal feature in your project. Think gold, silver, brass, copper, aluminium or steel. It could be in the form of embellishments, cardstock, paint, gilding wax, foil, gold leaf, rub ons, or paints. Just remember to ensure that you create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby,mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

For this month's challenge I have created a 5 x 7 inch journal panel and kept the focus with metallics in any way I could.

 For the background I used heavyweight watercolour paper and cut my background piece and laid it an arrow die on the flat side to take the impression but not cut it. I then dribbled, spritzed and dried some areas of prussian blue, turquoise interference, and emperor's gold before blending quinacridone gold mainly around the edges. To finish I brayered emperors gold over the whole piece - it got picked up on the raised areas and looks somewhat like faux gold leaf.

 I kept the embellishing simple as I didn't want to hide much of that opulent background. The globe was die-cut from gold crd and I used Andy Skinner's satin sunset and crystal glaze embossing powders on it.

The metal pieces were all altered with dazzling metallic paints with some gesso and burnt umber media fluid acrylic.

I think the lovely lady looks as though she has embarked on a cruise adventure. I wonder who she is with and where she is going?

I hope you have a little time to pop over to see what the other Creative Guides have created for the line up and maybe you will get a chance to make something yourself for Amanda's great challenge.

Supplies from Country View Crafts

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - prussian blue hue, quinacridone gold, interference turquoise, burnt umber

DecoArt Dazzling Metallics - emperor's gold, pewter, ice blue
Andy Skinner embossing powders - crystal glaze, satin sunset

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

November DecoArt Mixed Media Team project

I have a project up on the DecoArt Mixed Media blog showing how to create a pitted surface using paints, mediums and UTEE. I made swatches for faux metals and faux enamelling and linked it back to a fossil panel post back in September where I grunged up the surface and promised this technique would come later in the year. So here it is. 

All the main steps for the technique can be found on the DMM blog here.

But I also made a Christmas card to show how the technique could be used for other projects and this one shows the gold and silver samples used for the bells.

 Process steps for the Christmas card

1. Take a piece of good cardstock and dry brush a layer of gesso over it. I use a brush with very little on at a time so that parts of the card still show through.

2. Dip the card in some watery titan buff and dry.

3. Rub pumice stone distress ink pad over the whole surface, spritz with water. Rub the excess off and heat dry to watch the random patches of the card soak up the ink.

4. Paint the Nordic stencil (by Tim Holtz) with gesso, lay over the card gesso side down and rub over. 5. When you peel back the stencil you have the design imprinted on the surface.
6. Dry the gesso and rub an iced spruce distress ink pad over it, spritz with water and dry. If necessary add some more puddles of blue with stormy sky - dry again.
7. Add some touches of tissue/washi tapes.
8. Spritz with water and flick some splatters of a watery wash of quinacridone gold, spritz with water if they don't disperse enough and dry. You can see the subtle texture from the stencil on this photo too.

9. Add some neat quin gold around the tissue tape, spritz and dry.
10. Use a stamp platform to stamp the sentiment.

11. Seal the surface with two thin layers of matte medium.
12. Die-cut bells and greenery and adhere to the card adding some more thin washi tapes over the stems.

13. Finish by adding some dribbles or quinacridone gold to enhance the rusty look.

I'd love it if you had a minute to pop over to the DecoArt blog to see all the samples I made.

Thanks for stopping by and

xxx

Updated from DecoArt blog

nstructions :

Process steps for the pitted surfaces technique that I used on all the samples:
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 Value 3/Carbon 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

Pitted Transparent Enamel:
(Enamel is a natural form of quartz. In simple terms, enameling 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.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above. 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 I think.

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 DecoArt Media 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 Texture Sand 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 Patina antiquing cream 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 Extreme Sheen metallic paint in Pewter with Paynes Grey pits.

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

To see how you could apply this technique to another project I have made is this Christmas card with a gold and silver bell on and both are cut from the appropriate swatch sample.