Hello everyone!
How are you? Are you enjoying the cooler days as much as I do? Beside having no more sweaty moustache (lol) you also find probably more time to craft, right? This is one reason why I love the cooler season of the year better, honestly!
So it's the mid of month again and that means a new challenge over at Bastel-Traum's blog has started! And this time it is all about backgrounds! Yay! I LOVE creating colorful backgrounds! Whether it is for scene building or just a pretty background for itself - it is so much fun playing with all the colors and techniques and and and..!
So my inspiration for you is a baby card with a background that I made with distress oxides, water, micro glaze and white acrylic putty cream - whew!! :-)
First, I brushed the Distress oxide colors (blueprint sketch and tumbled glass) onto my watercolor panel and spritzed some water droplets over it to lift off some ink. This gives a pretty texture. Then I dried it with my heat tool. Then - and this is very important - I put a layer of micro glaze over the whole surface to seal the distress oxides. They react with any humid media, so you need to make sure the surface is sealed and won't react anymore with water or any humid media. Then I continued with my white acrylic putty cream. I used a starry sky stencil to put the cream over 2 thirds of the whole panel. Thanks to the micro glaze, the putty cream stays pure white and won't react with the distress oxides underneath (or at least only a tiny bit, but it's not visible). Let it air dry, no heat tool here! You will risk brownish stars, ew! :-)
The cool thing is, you are able to scratch off some stars or dots after applying and drying, because the surface is pretty smooth due to the micro glaze (but no worry, the acrylic putty cream won't come off if you don't scratch it ;-) ) So you still can adjust the sky with less stars if you think it is too busy! I love that. So I scratched a few off to make it look less busy.
Then I placed my images (I colored them with regular watercolors) on my panel, also my "welcome" sentiment by Paper Smooches (it's an oldie, but still goodie, but as far as I know not available anymore), making sure I leave some space for vellum clouds. These clouds are my space holder. I will add the baby's name as soon as I know it :-) I folded the vellum around the edge of my panel and secured it at the back with some tape, and at the front I just glued it on 3 different little spots and covered the glue with some diecut stars.
I hope you liked this little "how to" background tutorial and you will play along with us!
Happy crafting!
Hugs,
