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Friday, September 14, 2012

Inspiration deck - part three

Time to put part one and part two of the inspiration deck together:

remember these tissue papers I painted?
 

They peel off the freezer paper pretty easily.  There were a few little holes and tears in the paper, but not many, and I didn't care since I was using them for collage anyway.
 I tore off a chunk and used gel medium to glue the whole big piece over some cards.
(warning:  Jess has asked us not to use Mod Podge because she had big problems with a few decks last year.  Gel medium was my one extravagance in this project.)
 
 The tissue was still kind of wet and gluey when I pulled the cards off the freezer paper and separated them.  It made the tissue rip in interesting ways.
 
 Here's an example using a different tissue paper:
 
You can peel them off the freezer paper in a single sheet and trim them with scissors
 


After this, I wanted to explore other ways of creating texture and layers on my cards.
I tore little strips of newspaper:
Glued them on the sheet at random, overlapping multiple cards:
 I rolled on a light layer of gesso to tone it down a bit:
 I grabbed a homemade stamp (made from that same non-skid rubbery stuff) and rolled paint on it:
and stamped these little blue dots all over:
 the sheet of cards now looked like this:
I thinned some darker blue paint and some black paint with water:

then I started flinging the paint all over them by shaking the brush:
 Here they are with both blue and black drips before I cut them apart:
 
Now, I realize the paint flinging approach is not for everyone, so in consideration of those of you who don't have the space or inclination to get totally messy, I present an alternative way to add layers of paint:

 I buy these die-cut scrapbook papers from the big crafts stores and use them as stencils.  They're pretty cheap and hold up well to many uses:

 Here's what the cards looked like when I used gesso over the stencil:
 Here's what they looked like when I used blue paint over the stencil:
such different effects from the same stencil.  I love that.
 
Here's a sampling of the variety of backgrounds I created using these techniques.
All off the steps you've seen so far were done in a single (albeit long) evening of art making.

Stay tuned for part four in which I let the cards dry overnight and then add the text and finishing touches.

5 comments:

  1. Whew, I'm exhausted just reading it! How you keep going amazes me, and these backgrounds are fantastic. I've still never sorted out what 'freezer paper' is, though I'm always reading about it. I take it that it's at shiny non-stick surface, but I've never seen it on sale in UK.
    You are so generous with your explanations of 'how to'. Will try some of them. Lovely colours.

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  2. Okay now I KNOW you don't sleep. Is it spinach? or PIE? Fantastic. xox

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  3. Ooohhh fun techniques, and great results....I love how you take us through your steps - it's like vicarious art-making!

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  4. I love those stencil sheets! I used them all thet time. If you're careful, you can even spray paint withthem, and if you don't mess withthem while they are wet, they make the stencil sheet stronger.

    These are great. I wish I weren't at work; I'd experiment right now!

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