Revisiting old Techniques - Emboss Resist

I love this technique and have used it alot in the past but I thought I would update it to create a vintage shabby timeworn look.

Process Steps

1. Paint a coat of acrylic paint over the surface and dry - I used rust.

2. Stamp with embossing ink, cover with clear embossing powder and heat.

3. When cool paint over the entire surface with another colour, this time I chose ocean breeze.

4. Leave it to dry until it's just tacky to the touch then wipe over with a damp cloth to remove the paint from the embossed image. The harder you wipe the more you will reveal. If like me you are using something like greyboard that rubbed back to the original surface take the underneath color and with your finger fill in the rubbed out area and distress by dabbing it gently.

5. Give it a timeworn look by adding a couple of watery washes of rust and quinacridone gold and leave to dry naturally.

6, Sand the edges and rub around with brown or rust coloured permanent inks - I used coffee archival.

xxx

Supplies

Andy Skinner Creative Expressions - Artist Pigment Paint - Rust

Andy Skinner Creative Expressions - Matt Chalk Paint - Ocean Breeze

Andy Skinner Creative Expressions - Stamps - Old Seals, Create, Gypsie Queen,
Tando Creative - Media Board

Miscellaneous - Embossing ink, embossing powder

Revisiting old techniques - watery layers with wax resist

I'm still going back to old layering paint techniques and adding other layers to them. This time I also mixed my paints for nearly every layer, I just love experimenting with colours to see what appears.

Process steps

1. Seal substrate with gesso.

2. Mix dark pinky red using quin red, titan buff, titanium white, burnt umber, paint layer over the whole surface, splatter water droplets, heat a little, soak up excess water with kitchen roll.

3. Repeat by adding diarylide yellow and pyrrole red to the left over mix.

4. Repeat by adding titan buff, titanium white to the mix.

5. Rub wax over the surface, paint a layer of titanium white only, heat gently and rub away with kitchen roll. If not enough rubs away  carry on heating small areas and rubbing in the opposite direction until you are happy with it.

6. Repeat step 5 several times by lightening the colour each time and also experiment with not heat drying the surface at the end.

 Having got the painty layers for your background - you could go on to add more layers with some stamping ..............

 ............. transfers or rub-ons .............

........ some die-cuts ...........

............... some stamped ephemera or images ..........

................... a vintage photo ....................

...... or maybe a completely different set of further layers. These were just for ideas.

xxx

Andy Skinner workshop ATCs

Yesterday I went to Feltham to attend an Andy Skinner workshop with Nikki (Addicted to Art), Cathryn, Suz (Surrey Crafts), Karen and Fiona (My Artful Muse). It was a fabulous day creating and making an ATC box and five ATCs using lots of fabulous pastes, paints, rice papers and transfers in Andy's inimitable style.

I have blogged the photos of the ATCs and links to the products and YouTube videos over on Andy's blog.

Using Structure Paste and paints.

 

Using Strata Paste

Using Resist Paste and Rice Papers

Using Lava paste and a palette knife

Using Lava Paste and a brayer

xxx

Retro Adventure for Andy Skinner

Today I have a vintage media board over on Andy's blog.

Here's just a snippet from one corner. It's in my shabby vintage collage style and I included some of Andy's products in the making.

I'd love it if you could pop over to take a look at the photos and details I've added.

xxx

How can you resist at AVJ - Bloom and Grow

Today our lovely Teamie Amanda takes the chair hosting the new challenge at A Vintage Journey. How can you resist it?  A couple of times a year I am asked to do a craft session with a group of lovely ladies and this last time we made a canvas board using DecoArt Media paints and mediums. The focal image is an old wood mounted stamp.

Take the canvas board and a piece of sponge and blend gesso over the board until it is smooth and covered.

Repeat with the small greyboard piece.

Add a tiny dot of sap green, 2 drops of titan buff and three dots of titanium white to your foil palette.

Take a piece of sponge and a babywipe and blend the colours over the canvas board until you get a light mottled effect background – waft it to dry. Scrape decoupage randomly over with plastic card, not too thickly and put one side to dry.

Stamp the flower with embossing ink on the small panel and clear heat emboss. 

When cool rub quin magenta with finger over the flower head and around the edge and sap green on the leaves and around them just to give a strong colour to the outline. Leave it to fully dry. It looks very messy at this point - but don't panic.

Rub the colours off of the flower with baby wipe and dry kitchen towel.

Take a piece of sponge and blend over sap green, cerulean blue, titan buff and titanium white creating darker layers to the outside and a lighter layer in the middle. Sponge up to the outside of the embossed image. If you need to create some shadow around the flower use distress inks and a small brush with water to blend around it. Finish by using titan buff on the scrubby side of the sponge to get light splatter effect. This is the panel I demoed at the workshop.

Add the sentiment.

Take a piece of sponge and a babywipe and blend the green and blue colours over the canvas board until you get a darker effect on the background, keep wiping back and adding more until you are happy with the darker contrast over the light. Leave to dry then splatter with some vintage mixed pink (quin magenta, white and burnt umber) and almost immediately lightly lay a dry piece of kitchen roll over the top to take out some of the colour.

Stamp second generation text with watering can archival ink.

Distress and ink the edges lightly. Glue the panel to the board, add the words and adhere the flowers.

The spray is made up of all shop bought flowers (sorry Jennie) and the different sizes are all easy to come buy. I always buy when I see them so I have a variety in a tub ready to use.

Add a Tim Holtz easel to the back.

I had a group of 10 ladies at the workshop and only one uses acrylic paint at home. They all made one of these in 2 hours, I had gessoed all the boards and stamped and embossed the flowers for them but they did all the rest. Just wish I had been able to get some photos.

This is my sample of how I have used a resist technique but if you have a minute pop over to the blog post at a Vintage Journey to see all the wonderful and inspirational samples and ideas for using resist from the team.

Follow your HeArt.

Shabby Industrial - Media Board

It's my turn over on the Andy Skinner blog again today and I am sharing this mixed media board that I made for Stitches in February. It was one of those pieces that was created 'in the moment' and none of the steps got recorded anywhere but I guess I could take a stab at how it came together.

The background is most definitely an example of my weathered wood technique that I love so much and was used  on this faux wood sample I made at the beginning of March. You can check out the tutorial there. It looks as though I probably used DecoArt chalky finish paints and the wax resist certainly worked well on that area where the wood looks as though the paint has peeled back several layers and looks pretty realistic irl.

I'm pretty sure the cogs had been give some coats of paint and not finished off so I used either white paint or white gess daubed over them and dipped them into some watery washes before sealing them with a varnish.

The word band has been given several coats of different browns and rubbed away so that only some of the colour is left and when dry rubbed over again with white paint or white gesso to fill in the alphabet letters and fully rubbed away from the metal. It was mounted over a piece of chipboard given a coat of perhaps raw umber and then a coat of clear crackle glaze which would have been rubbed over and wiped back with white antiquing cream.

The hitch fastener holds a jump ring with little painted arrow.

Again just the star had some daubs of paints and rubbed down to look aged and I had found some very tiny stars which I couldn't resist adding.

Some faux nuts and bolts, a stamped number 8 and a rub on number with metal cog and clocks finished it off.

You will read in my post on Andy's blog about how I have been inspired and taught by him over a number of years and everything I have learned has influenced my style and passion for my art today. What is so lovely is that we are all individuals who bring our own style, experiences and ideas to our work and when he asked me to be on his team Andy said he loved my vintage style - so here we have a touch of vintage inspired by the industrial from Andy.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

12 Tags of 2013 - second entry

The sun is shining its a beautiful morning and here I am, as promised, with my second tag for May and linking to Tim's 12 tags of 2013 where all the details can be found and where Tim demonstrates the techniques and shows how he put his tag together. There is also some amazing inspiration with the other entrants too, lots of beautiful colour, styles and designs, I always marvel at the different interpretations and I often say to myself, 'why didn't I think of that?'. 

Tag - Unforgettable

So you know what? Again, at first, I was not overly happy with what I had achieved with this tag, I liked the mix of stamps (still do) but I overdid the background and I didn't put enough rub-ons on. The effects were quite dull and drab.

What I did do though was have an inspirational moment as I was drafting this post and went back and added some white pen to lift some of the areas more. Yay, love it now, it looks so different. Shame I didn't get a before and after pic.

This is much more a shabby chic interpretation and I love the colours. By the time I had finished this tag made me very happy.

 Supplies used -

Distress Stains - Antique Linen, Weathered Wood, Brushed Pewter, Tattered Rose.

Distress Inks - Bundled Sage, Iced Spruce, Tattered Rose, Antique Linen

Archival Ink - Black, Blue Violet

Stamp sets - PaperArtsy HP1005, Stampin' Up Nature Walk, Artistic Outpost Ephemera Backgrounds

Rub-ons from my supplies

I am entering this into the Artistic Outpost Referral Programme - I am not sure it will qualify as it is not mostly AO stamps but the background one is.

I am off doing an alcohol inks beginner's masterclass today. I have designed a little book everyone can keep their samples in which will serve as an aide memoire for the future.

Have a wonderful day and rest of the week and if you are celebrating something special have an amazing time.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Fleur de Lys UPA RAQ - The Paris Issue

Happy New Year Everyone - I hope it is everything you want it to be.

Today at Unruly PaperArts sees the start of a month inspired by a wonderful city and we travel to the City of Light to be inspired by the beautiful and stylish Paris of today and yesteryear.

To start us off I have made a small frame with a Fleur de Lys theme.

The frame was painted with two coats of emulsion and when dry covered with a mix of Fresco Finish metallic glaze and cranberry Adirondack ink and later rubbed over and painted with ripe persimmon. To make it look older it was sanded in places and inked over with walnut stain.

The backing board was covered with music paper then clear embossed twice and inked over with dried marigold, picked raspberry and cranberry.

I stamped a Fleur de Lys on green coredinations paper and cut out mounting the metal charm in the middle of it.

The embellishment on the backing board is a spellbinders fleur de lys accents.

Well having had the family, friends and neighbours in last night to celebrate and see in the new year, Ken and I spent the day clearing up and then getting all the decorations down and put away. Now I can focus on getting some serious time in my little craft room. I hope you had a good evening too and are ready now to have fun exploring new techniques, styles and ideas over the next 12 months.

hugs {brenda} x0x