Joyful Heart

For my DT project for Creative Expressions this week, I thought I'd create a painty panel........ yes yes, I know....I ALWAYS seem to be doing painty panels!!! My favourite thing to make though, so I'm not apologising!! Here is Joyful Heart..

A started off by painting a greyboard panel with thick layers of white paint, then heating them. The thick layers bubble up and create some fabulous texture. All the texture on the background is just heated up paint!
I smeared on Pool and Citrus paint, then brayered lightly with Black to give the grungy look, and to highlight the texture further. A little Purple Twilight paint was smeared on too, then I got busy with the stamping...

I used Chicken Wire, a grid pattern from the Urban Beat plate, AlphaWriting and the mini hearts from the featured stamp plate this month, Hearts Entwined.

Once the background was done it looked like this..

As the base is so textured, and the larger heart stamp (from the same Hearts Entwined plate) filled with detail, I didn't want to risk stamping it straight onto the base. I decided to stamp onto tissue, but with a little twist I thought I'd share! First, stamp the image onto the tissue...

Use an ink that will be permanent! Make sure its dry....

I like to tear around my tissue images, I think it helps it to blend in to the background better than if it was cut...

Now for the extra step. As the base is very colourful with black areas already, I was a little worried some of the black detail on the stamp would get a bit lost. I wanted the image to really 'pop' from the base, yet still blend in, if you see what I mean! To help with this, I painted the back of the filigree around the heart with white paint...

Dry this too...

Adhere to the background with a layer of Multi Medium both under and on top of the tissue...

Carefully smooth the image and let it dry. Once dry, the tissue becomes transparent, but the areas you painted white will have a gentle white 'haze' behind them. This stops them becoming confused with the background, which is fab if you have a busy design underneath. This is a great technique for faces too, sometimes a figure looks a little odd with the background showing through the face!
You can see the difference here...... the centre of the heart wasn't painted, so all the background shows through, but the filigree parts 'pop' with the white behind them....

Once that was dry, I finished off the panel by adding a textured central heart to the image...

I stamped the heart onto scrap card, cut out the heart from the middle and added puff paint to it. Once heated, the puff paint becomes textural. I painted it red, then added a gloss glaze.
The 'joy' comes from my fav alphabet set just now, Sam Pooles Clear Mini Alphas.

This was stamped onto tissue as well!
I think the red really adds to the more muted grungy colour scheme, hope you like it too!
love Trish xxx