TEXTURED METALLIC BACKGROUNDS

The class this fortnight uses both white smooth watercolour card as well as Kraft colour card.  Both give a very different look with the white showing more of the true colours and the Kraft giving a darker tone because of the brown colour of the base of this card.  I have used both Distress Stains as well as the Distress Paints using Tim Holtz's method of swiping colour onto the craft sheet (not to be confused with the Kraft coloured card!  ;-)   and then swiping your card through it.  In all instances I have made sure to include one of the 3 metallic stains or paints to give a metallic lustre to the cards that you can't see on the computer screen.  I also used gesso to make extra marks on the cards and on most of them have coated the gesso with embossing powder for extra texture to the embossing.  

"Not cheap"... (Paints on white watercolour card)

"100%"... (Stains on white watercolour card)

"Twirl"... (Paint on white watercolour card)

"New eyes"... (Stains on white watercolour card)

"Chaos"... (Stains on Kraft card)

Notice the little skull stamped shapes in the background?  They were

made by cutting some craft foam into a skull shape and

stamping into gesso and then coating with a little embossing

powder.  Embossing powder wasn't over all of the stamping, 

just a little to add some texture.

The samples below are all on the Kraft coloured card.  You can see

how the Metallic paints in the Stains and Paints really make it shimmer!

Stains...

Paint...

Paint...

"Stains"...

DIE-CUT RESIST

 When I was in the United States recently I bought a couple of boxes of Reynolds Waxed Paper as it's almost impossible to buy decent waxed paper here in Australia (and it was $1.69 a roll!!!).  I've used waxed paper before for resist techniques and stumbled across another way of using it for backgrounds.... run it through your die-cut machine (Sizzix Big Shot or Cuttlebug etc.) with your die-cut shapes!  (I used these on gloss card, a much better result than with plain card stock.) It works really well and I tried out various methods of colouring but found that Distress Stains spritzed with a little water made really pretty background colours and when you wipe off the excess when it's dry using a damp paper towel, the wax design is revealed!  Imperfect?...perfect!!!

"Whisper"...

 "Nothing good"...

"Realism"...

"Parlour games"... (as in "step into my

parlour said the spider to the fly").  This

particular card was coloured using

Distress Ink Pads with sponges and then

water flicked on to get the little spots.

"Need a crown"... This one was coloured

using Brusho's.  You do need to blot the

Brusho off to get most of the water off

before you'll see the wax design.

CORRUGATED DISTRESS STAINS

The technique for this fortnight uses gesso, a deeply corrugated card and Ranger Distress Stains.  When you use gesso first on a background, the colours that you apply after will be affected because of the different absorption properties of gesso compared to a plain card background.  For this reason, I prefer to use gesso on only parts of a background so you can get a great contrast effect with the colours that you use on top as some will be on gesso and some will be on untreated card.  Love how easy the Distress Stains are to use for this technique.  A water spritz bottle will help to spread the Distress Stain on the card too, especially as this particular card that I'm using for the background is so heavily corrugated with very deep channels.  Also received my Dina Wakley "All the girls" stamps and love how they stamp onto coloured scrapbook paper.

 

"Contemplation"... (Rusty Hinge and Picked Rasberry)

 

"Strong"... (Peacock Feathers and Gathered Twigs.  Also used some of the

Ice Resin Enamels on both the card on the right hand side as well

as coating the brad with it - looks great!)

 

"Beauty is not caused"... (Faded Jeans and Walnut Stain - notice how the

Faded Jeans has turned a lavender colour when it goes over the gesso.)

 

"Nest Builder"... (Evergreen bough & small amount of Walnut Stain)

 

 

These ones below are from the previous class "Glue Scribble Distress". 

This one's my favourite!!!

 

"Chop Chop"...

 

"If you wait"...

 

"Educated Weed"...

Burnt Distress Stain

We've just had a restock of all the wonderful Distress Stain colours at Scraptivate, just in time for my next atc technique class....Burnt Distress Stain. The Distress Stain is the base colour for this technique and I'll be using a lemon to burn it...yep, you read it right....a lemon! So the darker bits on these backgrounds are from the lemon. Samples follow...

"Not Wanted"...

"Wild Life"...

"Now what do I do"...

These last 3 are from the previous class Metal Foil Stamping.

"Rapture"...

"Broken"...

and my favourite, "Cutting Edge"...

There will be more samples of the Burnt Distress Stain within the next week as I always create something with the demo's that I show the girls in the classes. I LOVE my Distress Stains!!!

Distress Stains, Watercolour Backgrounds classes

The current atc class that I'm teaching at Scraptivate is making backgrounds using the new Ranger Distress Stains. Only available in 12 colours presently, I'm sure the other 24 will be out at some stage in the future. My only wish is that Spun Sugar was not released in this first lot, it should've been Victorian Velvet....hopefully it'll come out soon! Not a big fan of fairy floss pink but the Victorian Velvet colour is just gorgeous!

I've been doing the backgrounds on both gloss and matte card stock and the difference is amazing! Personally love it on gloss more, but for quick and easy colour, nothing beats the Distress Stains.

"Artistic"...(gloss card - Wild Honey & Dusty Concord)

"Life is Change"... (gloss card - Forest Moss & Broken China)

"Voyeur"... (matte card - Vintage Photo & Broken China)

"Sleep"... (matte card - Fired Brick & Walnut Stain with Fired Brick splats)

The last class was Watercolour Backgrounds and I didn't get around to uploading any pics so here they are.

"Wild"... (Lyra watercolour crayons)

"Clean the guns"... (Lyra watercolour crayons)


"Diabolical"... (Twinkling H2O's)

Lastly, here's a couple from the 3rd last class - Shimmer Spray Backgrounds.


"Zombie"... (Peeled Paint Distress Re-inker & Antique Gold Perfect Pearls)

"Archway"... (Broken China Distress Re-inker & Pewter Perfect Pearls)

n