Grungy canvas board for Andy Skinner

I love using making easel boards and sometimes use the canvas boards so that they create that lovely textured look in the background. Today I've teamed it with Tando greyboard shapes, Andy's stamps and stencils and DecoArt media line paints and mediums. I think this has a shabby appeal to it with the neutral colours - what do you think?
This is my contribution the Andy's Creative Team schedule and also over on his blog today.

Drip a few drops of  Dark Grey Value 3, Titan Buff, Burnt Umber and Titanium White Media Acrylic paints on a flat palette and with a sponge take time to rub and dab them blending them together to get a lightish mottled background on your canvas board. It dries quickly so you can almost immediately scrape some decou-page sealer over the surface randomly and leave it to fully dry.

Take the small panel, stamp the bird with embossing ink and heat emboss with black EP. When cool rub over the crow with phthalo blue, raw umber, burnt umber and then some titan buff over the beak and feet. Take the colours over the edge of the embossing to give a strong coloured outline in most places - you will see some of it showing through the next layers of paint you are about to put on.

Take a piece of sponge and a babywipe and blend the brown and grey colours over the canvas board until you get a darker effect on the background, rub with your fingers and and keep wiping back, adding more etc until you are happy with the darker colours over the light and you should also have a darker edge keeping the centre lighter. Leave to dry.

Rub the colours off the bird with a babywipe and piece of kitchen towel. With the sponge and a babywipe mix and blend lighter shades of the browns and grey with titan buff and titanium white (like above) layering them so that again you keep the lighter colours in the centre and end up with darker ones on the outside. Paint the edges of the board. Finish by using carbon black and raw umber on the scrubby side of the sponge and lightly dab to get a random splatter effect.

Give it a coat of clear modeling paste using a palette knife to drag it across the surface. Leaving ridges and texture in the surface is good.

I had added a little black pen to the design as I had some white splattery spots appear, the pen was supposed to be permanent but looked what happened. I think it totally adds to the effects. 

Take a round chipboard piece triple emboss it with stampendous ancient silver embossing enamel and stamp with the number wheel from the Curiosity set of stamps using cobalt archival ink.

Use texture sand paste and the browns and black paints to get this rusty effect on the sun wings.

Come back to the canvas board and use stamps, stencils and black gesso to grunge it up a bit.

Now assemble to create your finished design.

You'll see that during the assembling process I added part of a Tando clock to the design, once put together I felt the composition was a little unbalanced.

The blue medallion is raised quite a bit off of the background and stands out beautifully.

I finished with an easel on the back so this can stand on a shelf.

Thanks for stopping by.

Products

Greyboard shapes, clock

Stamps - Stampendous - Curiosity, Handle With Care, Skuldoggery, Birds and Bones

Aged Silver Embossing Enamel

Stencil - Usual Suspects

Kit - Industrial Wings

Media fluid acrylic paints - Dark Grey Value 3, Titan Buff, Burnt Umber, Titanium White, Phthalo Blue, Raw Umber, Carbon Black

Mediums - Clear Modeling Paste. Decou-page Sealer, Texture Sand Paste

Tando theme - Layers - Mini Book Storage - pink shabby vintage

Creating mixed media acrylic paint layers in a shabby style.

This was a piece I made originally for the DecoArt Media blog but I wanted to share the steps here for the Tando Blog too where today the theme is simply 'Layers' and so this fitted in perfectly.

I wanted to create a shabby look to this storage shelf and keep to a vintage feel at the same time, it's often at this point I will look at my paints and get stuck!!!!!!!! The best way out for me is to go to my colour palette pinterest board and find something I like. I found this and it became my inspiration to get started. I also decided to have my first foray into trying out the DecoArt Premium acrylic paint range.

I used the pinks, red, white and buff colours to start the process of adding the layers - this first coat is so important to seal the substrate and to get you a good start but often very little (if any) of it shows through when you have finished but it provides your focus to the colours and ensures full coverage to begin with.

Stamp sets used - Andy Skinner

Skuldoggery, Spook, Tech Trauma Textures and Shabby Chic

Here are the colours I picked from the box.

 I often don't mix my colours on a palette, I just grab some of the various paints on my brush and mix on the substrate itself as I did here. It's very bright to start with but my next layers will tone it all down.

Using some of the stamps from the sets above I added plenty of stamped texture.

Here I used the monoprinting method of adding random distressed paint. There are three layers using titan buff, dark grey and burnt umber - I know it looks really messy but don't worry!!!!

For the next layer I mixed up some primary magenta, burnt umber and titan buff and made a gorgeous deep vintage rose colour. I spritzed it with lots of sprays of water to create a wash and then dipped each piece in separately and dried the pooled paint with a heat gun.

Repeat the last step but this time add some white to make the pink even lighter and dip again. This time my wash was a bit thicker ....

Repeat once more with even more white and you can see with each layer you see less and less of that messy background but some of the stamped elements are popping through as are interesting distressed areas of texture and colours.

By adding more and more layers your background is getting more depth to it and a more shabby look. Just keep adding until you are happy with the results.

You are probably now at a point where you have lost all definition of the original stamped layer but small areas and ghostly shadows are creating some lovely interest in your background so far. You could just leave it here before going on to the next main step or you can add some random partial stamping back in before moving on.

I decided to add just a small amount not mounting the stamps on a block and only partially inking them so they became distressed images and text. I decided to just use the text and the postmark and watering can archival ink whereas I had used black in the original.

OK now onto the next layer and take a little white premium gesso with a palette knife - flatten it on your paper/foil palette ...

... and then keeping the knife flat to the surface of the board drag small amounts over the background so you get a distressed look. You can see the depth the layers have created and when you look deep into it you can see a little of the original pink, some of the other colour tones where we added the monoprinting and the changes of pins where we added the dip and dry washes. You can also see some of the original stamping as well as the text and postmark we added on the last layer. Neat!

Before I vintaged it up I wanted to see what it would look like put together and where I would add some decoration. I had already thought I would add some of the shabby chic stamps but I also realised it really needed a dirty wash to tone it down a bit before I went onto that.

I first stippled all the outside edges with some pink and white paint so they blended well with the overall design and put the storage back together again glueing the inside edges to make sure it all stays together.
Mix together some brown and grey paints with premium matte media and spritz some water into it to get a dirty wash and paint all over allowing some of it to sit in the crevices.

Stamp images onto tissue paper and tear round the edges and adhere using decoupage glue.
Gather some embellishments together, paint chipboard pieces and I also found some flowers and rafia to finish it all off.

You can never recreate exactly the same background again as it is such a random process. After I've dipped the substrate into a wash I'll just let it settle and pool for a few seconds before I start to dry it, this helps to give more variation in depth of colour. I'll also have a piece of kitchen towel in my hand to dab of some bits of the wet paint which gives me more control over how much is laid down and how much can be seen peeping through.

Thanks for staying with me for such a long post but I hope you have enjoyed the visit.

Tando tiny mini album

There are some panels that come with the new flexible spined mini album and I've made one up and they are so cute. It is my contribution on the Tando Blog today.

I cut one piece from a canvas pad to make a wrap and adhered all three parts and left to dry and then just lightly distressed it with brown distress inks.

The pages were made with a hidden hinge spine and double, folded pages glued over them.

Once adhered into the album I made 2 panels using Andy Skinner stamps to finish off the look.

Make a hole in the spine and attach a piece of elastic for it to hold the booklet closed.

I simply added some numbers and a vintage photo to finish it off.

These are so quick to put together and would make a lovely little gift for someone.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wallpaper and dress forms for Country View Crafts

My turn again to share a project over the CVC blog and I had great fun creating an easel board using some of the newer products from Tim Holtz.

If you'd like to see the process steps and more photos please pop over to take a peak at how it all came together.

Updated from CVC

I thought I would make an easel card using the Tim Holtz wall paper and his inventor 3 set of stamps with the lovely dress forms. You could use the composition and ideas to make an ordinary card but I have gone with the faux encaustic again.

Cut some thin greyboard and adhere a piece of the wall paper onto it using decoupage and then seal it with the same product. You will see that decoupage is very versatile and can be used as a glue, a sealer between layers and as a finish (top layer like a varnish). Scrape a thin and random layer of decoart crackle paint over and leave to dry.

I stamped the dress forms using black archival and then took greyish blue and neutral grey Amsterdam inks to paint n some of the dress form bodies and frames.

I distressed the edges of the panel with a distressing tool and blended in ground espresso distress ink knowing it was likely to move and seep a bit with the layer of DecoArt clear modeling paste on top. 

I stamped the scissors onto matte silver card, cut them out and again blended the brown DI around them and then laid them into the top of the paste just very gently pushing them into it.

The next layer I painted the scissors with a little raw umber and yellow oxide to tarnish them a bit, added some words and the gave another coat of clear modeling paste and added half a snap fastener as an inclusion.

I coloured up a canvas board using cerulean blue, light grey, titan buff and titanium white with a wet wipe to blend the colours. I gessoed using a brayer to create some highlights and then gave it a 'dirty' wash using burnt umber, raw umber, cerulean blue and titan budd with some decou-page sealer and water. I'll have a mini tutorial in my next post at the end of the month to see this with photo steps, so keep an eye out for it.

Eh voila, I just needed to add a mount board easel and it's finished.

I love making these easel cards, they don't take much longer than making a card one but they certainly have more impact especially if you can hand it to a friend but even paying the extra postage is worth it for a special occasion.

Faux Encaustic - Inclusions

It's faux encaustic time again. I was really trying to add different types of inclusions into these layers - paper, natural elements, hand written and card.

Seal greyboard media board with white gesso and blend titan buff, titanium white, medium grey and burnt sienna media fluid acrylics with a sponge. Adhere some tissue wrap sealing it with decoupage sealer.

Layer on a thickish coat of the decoart clear modeling paste and lay in some inclusions. I went and grabbed some dry grass from the garden and some seeds which were too big so I used some dry tea leaves from a used teabag instead. I added a little more of the modeling paste and left it to dry.

I timed the drying process and this particular board took 7 hours plus to fully dry but the modeling paste was quite thick around the seeds of the grass.

For the next layer I etched a dandelion seed head with a pencil and pokey tool and covered it with ground espresso marker. When I rubbed the ink away some remained in the channels creating the drawing. I also used a sharpie pen to write in some words and a little asemic writing.

Then came the next layer of clear modeling paste applied with a palette knife.

To finish add remnant rubs, some small splatters of  titanium white paint, a significant word - mine was computer generated and the third and final layer of modeling paste.

Look how those lovely layers have built up with the modeling paste giving it a beautiful encaustic look and feel to it.

The dried grasses were very prominent at first but have now been encapsulated into the whole piece and even though the ephemera were the first pieces to be stuck down including the card flower it's leaves look as if they are much higher than the type keys - but they're not.

I hope you're enjoying the faux encaustic work as much as I am loving making it.

Enjoy making and creating your own special art.