Saturday afternoon and a bit of a play!

Today I thought I would put together another little flower tutorial for you and also thought it might be fun to use PaperArtsy's new Grunge Paste as part of the background as I know that this long awaited product is now available for you to purchase.

Working on a piece of greyboard and using a palette knife, I scraped a layer of the Grunge Paste through one of my Crafters Workshop stencils.

I figured it might be nice to try and get some texture in the Grunge Paste within the design of the stencil, so with the stencil still in place, I started to gently pat the paste with the palette knife, just like you would if you were trying to get a snow effect on a Christmas cake....little peaks is what you're aiming for.

Then carefully remove the stencil. and either allow to dry naturally or heat it with your heat gun. I'm a heat gun girl......I have no patience whatsoever!!!

Select two colours of Fresco Finish paint in contrasting colours. The light one needs to be an opaque colour and the darker one should be one of the translucent or semi-opaque colours. I opted for Stone (opaque) and South Pacific (translucent).

Using a nice wide paintbrush, paint a layer of South Pacific over the whole background. You will notice how the paint looks two different colours,this is because the paint has soaked into the greyboard and sits on top of the white Grunge Paste, giving two shades of the same colour.

 

I have to admit, I was tempted to leave my background like this as it looked so good but that wasn't the intended purpose of the blog post, I wanted to show you how things came be transformed with lots of layers, so there you go, there's a little challenge for you.......make two pieces at the same time, leave one at this stage and carry on with all the layering on the next piece so that you can see the difference in real life.

Now take the opaque paint (Stone) and sponge paint on your chosen stamps with a piece of Cut'n'Dry foam and print over the background paint. I have to confess, I was a bit naughty with this project, I used images from all of my plates of stamps ELB01, ELB02 & ELB03!!!

 

 

When dry, paint a further layer of the translucent paint (South Pacific) over the top so that the opaque colour is not so bright. 

 

 

Now the layering fun begins!!! Choose a few more translucent colours and start layering them on with a clean brush. It is important to dry each layer thoroughly otherwise everything will turn muddy. I chose Lime Light, Zesty Zing, Claret, Smoked Paprika and Hey Pesto.

 



 

Once I was happy with all my layers, and knowing when to stop can be tricky, I added a bit of Classic Treasure Gold for a bit of a lift.

 

 

 

Now to make the flowers. First of all I painted a piece of Tim Holtz Grungepaper with a layer of the South Pacific paint and allowed this to dry naturally. I prefer not to use my heat gun on Grungepaper as it does tend to curl a little bit with the force of the heat gun. This I can wait for, the paint soaks into the Grungepaper nicely and doesn't take long to dry at all!!

 

For the three leaf spriggy thingy and the stem of the tulip, I chose Honey Dew, Hey Pesto and Green Olives paint. Start by sponging a layer of Honey Dew over the surface of the stamp, followed by a light layer of Hey Pesto and a smidgen of Green Olives around the edges. Print this on the painted Grungepaper.

 

 

When you have cut them out, you will need to paint the edges of the Grungepaper with a little of the South Pacific to hide the grey edges.

 

Now using Honey Dew, Beach Hut and South Pacific, print three tulip heads on the pre-painted Grungepaper and trim them as shown below. New dies will be available very soon to do this for you!!!!

 

 

Flip the small middle section over and paint it. I used Beach Hut and dry brushed a little Claret around the edges before stamping some script with Black Archival ink. You also need to turn this piece so the point is facing down as I intend to curl this petal over to reveal the script and if you don't do it this way, the writing will be up side down!!!

 

 

At this point, I realised that the colours of my stem and flowers were not quite right for my background and that is one of the things I love about using paint.......you can change it without having to start all over again!! I decided that as my background was really quite rich and warm, I needed to warm up the stem, leaves and flower head. I chose a few of the translucent colours and with a small paintbrush, started to paint over the image, blending a few colours together. You only need a small amount of paint for this, almost like dry brushing.

 

 

 

 

Now it's time to assemble everything together. I grabbed a paper and a metal flower as a little embellishment to sit on top of my trio of leaves, I felt it needed a little something extra, the leaves looked lost on their own! 

 

 

I curled the small, middle section of my tulip around a pencil before sticking the bottom section firmly down with doubled sided sticky tape. The middle layer was mounted on 3D foam pads for extra height as was the entire flower.

 

 

In order to make the flower jump out from the background, I added some pale green lace which I absolutely adore, this also gives the finished piece a bit of a vintage feel.

 

 

I hope this inspires you to have a bit of a play yourself and a little birdy tells me that my stamps are now also available from the following retailers as well as the retailers mentioned in previous posts.

 

Magpie Crafts, Coleraine. Tel: 028 7032 1131
BarjanB Crafts, Leicester. Tel: 01455 823 112

 

I hope you have a creative weekend.

Lin