Gesso and Distress Oxides

Loll Thompson hosted a few of us for a fun day of crafting on Sunday and one of the things we wanted to try was this technique Brenda posted on Country View Crafts.  Loll and I were looking at the instructions as we went along, and you'd think, being two educated adults, we'd be able to read and follow instructions well, but we just rushed ahead picking up odd details.  Needless to say, our results didn't look like Brenda's!

We did the smooshing with Oxide inks really well as we've done that before and ended up with great backgrounds.  What we did wrong was to read the next step as making a wash with gesso and water, and brushing it over the whole panel.

We ended up with kind of murky chalky pieces but went ahead and stamped our images on them.  Here's my finished card:

It's a pretty enough card but I lost all the lovely colour layering from the Oxide inks.

The flower stamps were inked up with Distress markers, using a MISTI, then spritzed with water and stamped on the background - I repeated the process to get a bit more detail.

The wildflower die was cut out twice and glued together for more dimension, and coloured with the same Distress markers.  I went over it with Wink of Stella for a bit of sparkle.

I kept the sentiment muted so as not to take away from the busy flower layers.

When I got home that night, I re-read Brenda's instructions and realized we'd done the gesso wash wrong.  So made another card doing it correctly, using the same colours, die, etc..  Come back tomorrow to see it - this blog post is already long enough!

Supplies:

Stamps - Unity "Insightful Meadows" flower, Rosie's Roadshow sentiment

Ink - Distress Oxide Peacock Feathers and Salty Ocean

Paper - mixed media and white cs

Size - A2

Accessories - Tim Holtz wildflower die, Tim Holtz blue and green markers, gesso, Wink of Stella, fun foam