Texture Tips with Melissa

Good morning! This is my first post in a new series that I will be doing each month featuring ways to incorporate texture into your mixed media art. This month in our Frog Dog Studio kit we received several blank artist trading cards (ATC's) to alter. Also in the kit was some awesome Viva Glitter Paste, which is fantastic for adding texture. For my main project, I wanted to create and show off my ATCs in a different way. So I started by making the ATC's first.

For the first ATC, I painted the entire card with Luminarte Silk Acrylic Glaze. Then I placed a stencil from Heidi Swapp over the top, and using an old credit card, I coated the top of the stencil with the Viva Glitter Paste. When you put the paste on over a stencil, you want to have a light touch. It should feel like you're icing a cake. The glitter paste reacted beautifully with the Silks and it really added a nice built up layer of texture for the background.

When the paste had dried, I embellished the card using the Maya Road sparkly buttons and some of the ArtChix clip art. Due to the thick texture on the background, I found it was easier to use a bit of hot glue to adhere everything. Below is the finished card.

Moving on to the second card I thought I'd try a different texture technique. This time I put a bit of acrylic paint on my palette, then scooped out a bit of paste and added it to the paint. I loosely mixed it up. I painted another ATC with the same dark blue Silk and when that dried, I used a paper towel and dabbed the paint/paste mixture in random spots all over the card. It added a nice rough but sparkly texture to that background. You can see it here:

I finished off this card using one of the cute wooden anchors found in the kit and a bit of blue ribbon bling trim that I had in my stash. I went back later and added one of the wooden buttons from the kit along with some cut out words from the clip art sheet.

For the third ATC, I really loved a particular piece of the clip art so I used the entire piece, then cut out the moon from another piece and added some of the iridescent Inka Gold to the moon to really make it luminescent. I also added the wooden wave piece from the kit to the bottom.

I finished off the project by purchasing a small printer's tray and attaching the ATC's in the top spots. We had just recently taken a trip to the beach for a week and I had this cute picture of all my girls together in the water that I wanted to display in the large opening at the bottom. I felt like it went with the whole evening, beachy, mermaid feel of the ATC's. I further embellished the tray using other items from the kit like the blue trim, the wooden whale, and small window openings. I used some washi tape to cover all of the edges and tie all of the colors in together. Below is the finished product, along with a few close ups:

Thanks for stopping by!!

Tweet