Technique Thursday!

Hi again!

Ok, so my title might be a tad deceiving - this is not a new series.  Don't get me wrong, I'm ambitious!  I'm just not that ambitious...yet. But hang on to your hats cause this technique has come with a bit of a lengthy post so perhaps grab a cup of tea or mug of coffee and read at your leisure.

As some of you might know, I looove trying new techniques.  To me there is almost nothing better than seeing something beautiful and figuring out how to create a similar look or item (with your own flair of course).  This is true for me in many areas; cooking, decorating, fashion and especially crafting!  One of the techniques that I've been really interested in trying is textured embossing.  I have seen such amazing projects by a wide array of artists; however, being up in Canada and being central to the city, my choices for craft products are very limited.  Almost everything (well, the good stuff) needs to be ordered from the US and with the high cost of shipping and the current near 30% bump on the exchange rate (eek!), it can get a tad ridiculous!  So I'm constantly looking for similar products  available to me up here that will produce the amazing results I'm looking to achieve.

Specfically for this post, I had been wanting to get my hands on some Wendy Vecchi or Ranger texture paste.  I've seen these products used by a number of artists and of course, if they vouch for them, that saves me the trial and error stage but when I went to my local box store I was disappointed to find that they don't stock them.  While wandering around the store I decided to look for some watercolour masking fluid to make an attempt at Kristina Werner's Watercolour Envelopes.  Well, while I did find the masking fluid, it was a tad cost prohibitive so I decided to leave that for another day.  But when I turned around I came across a whole aisle of texture and gloss products for canvass use - at 50% off!  Some of the jars were heavy and I knew they would be too substantial for the face of a card so when I saw the Liquitex Light Modeling Paste, I quickly checked online and see if anyone had used it for card textures.  Aaaaannnndddd... they had!  So I scooped it up and daydreamed all afternoon about all the amazing things I would create with it.

In order to create with this product, I used (and you'll need) the following:

• Liquitex Light Modeling Paste
• A craft mat (mine is from Ranger and is PHENOMENAL)
• A set of palette knives (I found these in the painting section too and was able to get a thick plastic starter's set for a few dollars (CAD))
• A stencil
• An ink pad
• Painters tape
• Card stock

To get started, I first taped my card stock down to my craft mat with some painter's tape.  I find this tape is great for this and watercolour techniques as it (so far) hasn't allowed my mediums or water to seep out onto the rest of my card and gives me a nice clean border line.  Lastly, I placed my stencil overtop of the card stock and secured that with some painter's tape to keep everything in place.

For colour, I ended up trying both my distress ink markers and a tiny little dark blue pigment ink pad I got in NYC years ago.  Both worked great and for this card I used my mini ink pad.  To get my colour, I simply applied the ink or marker to my craft mat, applied some of the modelling paste to my craft mat (in a separate area to avoid contaminating your palette and jar with colour) and then worked them together on my mat with my palette knife.  

Once I had my colour mixed in to my liking, I picked up the paste with my palette knife and began spreading it over my stencil.  For this card I wanted full and even coverage of my stencil so I applied paste over my entire stencil and then began dragging my palette knife over the stencil to remove the excess and create an even layer of paste over my card stock.

Once that was done, I quickly wiped off my knife with a baby wipe and removed the stencil from my card stock. I did give my stencil a quick (baby) wipe, but ultimately found that they clean better if you just take them over to the sink and suds them up with a bit of a hand rub and some soap and water.

I have a tiny polka dot stencil (in the pic above) that I wanted to use but it's way smaller than my card faces so I decided to pair it with some green patterned paper I had lying around.  I added my Mama Elephant Happy Script diecut and co-ordinating stamp sentiment and some sequins for a bit of pizazz.  A mini clothespin on top and a card base and I was good to go!

This was soo much fun to do and i'm looking forward to trying this technique with some more colour mixing and doing some incomplete coverage.  I'll be sure to let you know how those turn out as well. I did post my other paste attempt using the distress markers on my Instagram page so go check it out if you have a chance.

Challenges:

• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenges - Add A Little Texture

Have you tried texture pastes yet?  I'd love to hear about your experiences with it.  Have you tried anything that works really well?  Glitter or sparkles?  I may have to try adding a little twinkle to my paste on my next try.  

Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you have an amazing day.

With love,