Dabble with Fresco glaze

As many of you know, I have had a lot of time on my hands just lately and I've used that time to do a lot of thinking. One thing that occurred to me was that I have not really used my Fresco Finish glazes very much at all. I wanted to see if I could use them mixed with paint and applied with a brush to a project so that the paint looked like it had been sprayed on rather than painted on.  I can hear you all thinking, why in the world would you want to do that when you can actually water down the paint and spray it anyway? Well, the answer is simple, I just want to be a bit more in control of where the paint ends up, spraying is fabulous but I really don't have complete control over where it goes.

So here is what I did. I am a HUGE fan of Anna Dabrowska and this test piece is hugely inspired by her work.

 

 

I filled a small Artemio wooden frame with all sorts of odds and ends and used some self adhesive mesh (I think this is used by plasterers to join plasterboards together) on the frame and then painted the whole thing, including the frame with Concrete Fresco Finish paint. This is a lovely, neutral colour which I felt would be a good base for my little experiment.

I mixed a little bit of Spanish Mulberry and Space Cadet with some Matt Glaze on my craft sheet and also dispensed a little bit of Hey Pest too. I didn't need to add any glaze to this as it is already translucent.

I grabbed a brush and started by splodging some of the Spanish Mulberry over selected areas, followed by Space Cadet and then used Hey Pesto to fill the gaps, gently blending together where the colours overlapped.I was worried that the colours would become muddied but that didn't really happen at all.

I'm not entirely sure whether it looks like it has been sprayed or not but the results are a nice soft, subtle blend of colours which would have been harder to achieve without the glaze as two of the colours are opaque paints.

I also used a little bit of the Space Cadet/glaze mix to tint my frame. I wanted it to look dry brushed but without the effort of dry brushing and I was really very pleased with this.

Not so pleased with my photos though. I'm having to use my steam powered laptop today and I have no idea why it will not allow me to upload any photos that have been cropped!! Luckily, I found a restore button which allowed me to undo all my cropping, so I'll apologise now for any dodgy backgrounds that you may see!!!

 

Next up, the Treasure Gold treatment.

 

 

 

Followed by some adhesive pearls.

 

 

These colours are really not my comfort zone colours but I am really quite liking the soft, muted effect......very pretty.

 

I love how the Treasure Gold looks on the mesh too.

 

 

I had this little fob watch sitting on my desk that was originally silver. I had painted it with Taupe and added some Treasure Gold to it and am wondering if I should add it to this along with a few other embellishments to complete this project.

 

 

 

At the moment, they are not stuck down, I'm not sure if this will be the final destination for the watch or not. Sometimes, I just need to come back to it another day with fresh eyes.

 

 

So if you have some glaze at home. it doesn't have to be the Matt variety, have a little play and see what you think.