Frilly and Funkie Guest Blogger

Hello Blogland, today I am thrilled to be a guest blogger for Frilly & Funkie. Sponsored by the Funky Junky Boutique there is great inspiration and challenges with product and design spots to be won! You can find my guest spot here. I highly recommend you stop on by and play. Pamelia is the host & the theme for this challenge is What A Mesh! The challenge this time is to use any type of mesh (crinoline, cheesecloth, tulle, burlap, canvas etc) in your vintage or shabby chic project. You can find this challenge here.

 

My art journal page was designed to go in my on going spiral bound junque journal. To see more of this journal check out my Instagram (link on the side bar) #100daysofkarensart. The fun thing about this project is I can use all kinds of substrates.

One of my favorites is Crescent medium weight Art Board. I used the backside as I wanted to use molding  paste so I saved the front side for inks. This board is perfect to hold up to heavier pastes yet The Cinch can easily punch through it for the spiral binding.  

I don't know about you but I tend to over do things. I am picturing my friends laughing at this statement as the words come out of my mouth. When I was given the challenge "what a mesh" I had an immediate thought of what mesh I wanted to use. Next came color & ideas, finally theme. As I sat down to create however it became I could use a mesh stencil, with actual mesh & oh look I have chipboard mesh!!! The wonderful places my brain goes! Ok let's go!

Start with a layer of gesso, to give the paste something to grab onto, as the backside of the board is untreated. Once dry, anchor the mesh with a thin layer of molding paste. Let this dry. I usually have multiple projects on the go at one time so I am not waiting on drying paste which can take quite a bit of time. Next layer was through my net stencil with more of the light molding paste. As this board is going in an art journal I use light so it doesn't add physical weight to my piece. I also added some crackle paste just with a spatula in random spots. I am a tad obsessed with crackle right now, love the effect in can bring to a piece. Let dry completely- do not use heat gun.

Time for color! Adding Glimmer Mist & Glaze in blues, purples & green seemed a good place to go. I wish I had taken a pic at this point because my project looked like a hot mess. Mix media tip: just keep adding layers. Almost all my pieces have a case of the uglies at some point. I made a glaze using paint & acrylic glaze- 50/50, covered the whole piece, waited a few minutes & wiped some of it off. This help blend my color together in a cohesive piece but still let the multiple colors show through. Then went in and added back glimmer glam on the crackle spots which most of the color had lifted off. Much better! Once that was dry I dry brushed some metallic paint on the high points. This gives amazing shine to the piece.  

Time for embellishments. I didn't take step-outs of these but rather did close ups of how they look on the finished canvas. The seahorse was die cut from corrugated cardboard with the top layer pulled off, gessoed, and painted with glimmer glam. Glitter glass & microbeads were added using decoupage glue. The metal helm looking gear was added using glossy accents. For the cattails, simply add multiple colors of glimmer glaze. Glitter glass was also added with decoupage glue.Once the canvas was assembled all that was needed, more microbeads. 

Here is a close up where you can see some of the mesh in the piece & the rusty helm. I debated adding some fishermen netting with some shells & still may try that out to see how it looks. I have to say this is one of my favorite art journal pages & I may have to turn it into a canvas. Thanks again to Frilly & Funkie for letting me be a designer for this challenge. I hope you join in the fun!   

Supplies:

Crescent Art Board 5x7

Tattered Angels- Glimmer Glam & Glaze

Southern Ridge Trading Co..- cattail bushes chipboard

Finnabair for Prima- acrylic metallic paint, Mechanicals, microbeads.

DecoArts- crackle paste, Americana acrylic paint

Sizzix -Sand & Sea Die

Netting from fruit package

Hipstamatic & RhonnaDesigns- photo editing

Playing with Chipboard & Crackle Paste

Hello Blogland, today I am playing with chipboard & crackle paste over on the Southern Ridge Trading Co.. blog We are making this cute frame that is actually very simple! I am also entering this in the Frilly & Funkie Monthly challenge. The challenge this month is "going in circles" brilliant! The big question is... is this frame funky or frilly or maybe a little of both!

I used quite a few, fun chippies on this frame which has a picture of my daughter when she was just a wee toddler. We are also playing with crackle paste & doing a fun embossing technique. I hope you come along and play! 
***Excited to report this project won the challenge at Frilly & Funky. I will be on their blog as a future guest designer. Yay. 

Seth Apter Journal Play

How do we create a grungy, metallic art journal page?

Seth Apter has a line of stencils, stamps, and die cuts. I have taken a few classes with him & not only are his products unique and different he is a super nice guy and really good teacher! You can buy his products directly from his shop or in your local scrapbook &  paper arts stores.

The start of the adventure...

  Let's start with corrugated cardboard. Inexpensive & easy to find! Add a coat of gesso, lots of stenciling using flexible modeling paste. To get an idea of what this will look like go here. Once this was dry it was time to add some paint. I used DecoArt Media fluid acrylics and painted the background in varying colors of blue/teal, using a bit of Paynes grey with the blues. Once that was dry some random stamping in archival ink gave nice interest & texture. 

Have you always wanted to learn how to shade? 

 Using a fine brush I painted darker on the sides of the raised areas, blending the paint with my finger as I went. This gave some nice depth to the images. Using a hard piece of foam I hit the high points of the stenciled areas with Metallic Luster, this is one of my favorite techniques! Just adds that wonderful, shiny, metal look that is nice & grungy. I used a quote stamp of Seth's as a focal point. His products fit into each other which is too cool, leaving all kinds of options. 

Time for some die cuts! 

I had cut a bunch of shapes from gelliplate papers. Choices.... In the end I was feeling circle-ish. I simply took the 2 inside circles from the Robo Ring die, placing one inside the other and cut. This left me with 3 circle rings and a middle full circle, which I did not use. I stamped on these with archival ink. I also cut the same out of cardboard- about as thick as a cereal box. The trick is to run the die cuts through the machine 2x- as in forward and back (leaving the sandwich in place so the dies do not shift) to cut this heavier material. 

After distressing the edges so no cardboard shows through simply glue down the cardboard circles with a strong glue. I left off the pretty tops to keep the excess paint from getting on them. Fill in the circles with DecoArts crackle paste. When dry the paint on the bottom layer shows through the cracks. 

Let's add a pop of color!

I used fluid acrylic which is enough to color the paste but once dry doesn't cover the crack effect.  Once that was dry I glued my gelliplate cut-outs on top. 

Adding paint on the inside of the circles gave it that depth. Almost done! Adding a key after wrapping a copper metal coil around it and a tag that was painted and stenciled with the word enter. Voila! The tag covered the back pages tab which I had found distracting.

That's it! This was a super fun page to work on, although with all the modeling paste etc. I would work on it, set it aside, work on it. Tip: have a few projects on the go to prevent staring at wet paste willing it to dry faster. You do want to let these pastes dry naturally for maximum effect. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Leave me a comment if there is a project you would like to see on my blog!  

Supplies:

Seth Apter:

  die by Spellbinders- Robo Ring

 stencils by Stencil Girl:

-numbers, story time & urban outsiders 

stamps by Impression Obsession:

-context, journal coins & pattern play

DecoArt Media:

 Fluid Acrylics- cobalt turquoise,  cobalt teal, paynes grey, 

quinacridone burnt orange.

 Crackle Paste   

Metallic Lustre- copper kettle

Americana Acrylic- Lemon Yellow

Ranger: archival ink- jet black

Daler Rowney- black acrylic ink