Using an embossing folder mixed media style

I'm up on the Tando Creative blog today and this week the theme is 'embossing folders'.

I keep some offcuts of embossed card and thought I would experiment  with creating some random textures on a media board. Andy got me onto this when he did something similar on a project many years ago but I've taken it and changed it quite a lot.

A great distressed background using combined with rusty elements looks fab. I hope you can pop over to see the process steps.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx


Updated from the Tando Blog

I thought I would create a textured media board for embossing folder week and I liked it so much I decided it would become my 'Make and Take' project at Ministry of Mixology last month. (I was well ahead of myself with projects as I had a holiday coming up and wanted to get loads of projects scheduled well before hand).

I adhered a few pieces of torn/cut left over embossed card randomly onto a media board using matte medium and left it to dry between wax paper under a heavy box.

Don't worry about gluing the pieces over the edges, you can remove these when it's perfectly dry.

Next I scraped over some texture sand paste and heat dried it.

Paint a coat of white gesso to give it some tooth for the next layers and then spend quite some time spritzing water, dipping media acrylic paints into it, letting it move around a little and drying it. I repeated this step lots and lots of times using raw umber, quinacridone gold, burnt sienna and carbon black.

I wanted to highlight the textures a little more so I took a palette knife and white gesso and lightly scraped it over keeping the blade flat to the surface.

The White gesso is very stark so mix a dirty watery wash of paynes grey and quin gold and paint over the whole surface, dry it and seal with a varnish - I used soft touch.

I took some elements I had already rusted and a word (I have no idea why I chose the word 'waiting' although there is something special we are waiting for later in the year - that's my unconscious mind taking over perhaps!) and I put it together to finish it off. I'm really happy with this.

The textures from the embossed card are random and give a completely distressed look to the background.

Technique Tuesday #3 - Coarse Stucco - DecoArt

I've called this Coarse Stucco and there are two with slight variations of textures here. I have also included a technique called monoprinting to create layers. I'll come back to this in more detail another time.

Apply texture sand paste to substrate with a palette knife and dab the flat side over it to roughen it up. Leave to dry. I used greyboard and didn't prepare it in any way.

Dabble on three watery washes of  chosen colours, spritz and dry each layer separately until the paint has covered the whole piece. I used hansa yellow light, cerulean blue and viridian.

Take a small piece of card and brush paint over it and press onto the surface of the coloured piece. This is called monoprinting.
Monoprint titan buff ...

... and titanium white over the surface. It will stick to the higher points and leave the colour showing through underneath.

For my second sample I used a piece of card and began by sealing it with a coat of gesso before scraping the texture sand paste over it with a palette knife, just as if I was buttering a slice of bread and then when it was dry I dabbled the paints over again (I used the same colours plus a very little burnt umber to mute them a bit). You can see where the colours have been absorbed more intensely by the paste and the lighter channels of the watery washes inbetween.

Again I did the monoprinting with titan buff ....

.... and titanium white and got some quite different effects but used almost the same steps.

You can see another example here.

Thanks for popping by again this week and all your lovely comments on the techniques and the graphic for pinning. See you again next week with another technique for you to pop into your library of things to try.


hugs Brenda xxx