{Mixed Media Tutorial} A Design by Default from Carol

Hello everyone, Carol here with my last tutorial for the time being. I'm taking a little hiatus to concentrate on a house extension, a family wedding and hopefully some travelling once that's all done!

Today's tutorial came about more by default than design but I sometimes find that's the way art goes and often the results are unexpectedly pleasing.

I used various Distress Spray Stains on watercolour paper over the Floral Flutes stencil, dabbed off the excess stain and heat dried it a little. Whilst the stencil was still in place I ran it through my Platinum machine to emboss the card for added definition, knowing the ink would have run a little beneath the stencil.

This is where the surprise happened....I had hastily shoved a piece of copy paper beneath the shim to protect the plates from any ink transfer....not realising just how wet the ink still was!

This happened....a much nicer print than my original! It was quickly cut to size and added to a canvas board which needed a remake.

Next came some random background stamping using Mixed Media Elements.

Then I used some crackle paste through the Happy Flowers stencil. Sadly the crackle paste seems to have deteriorated fairly rapidly since I last used it and proved very difficult to manoeuvre over the stencil so I didn't get a very clean outline.

At this point I thought the job was a bad one and walked away leaving everything to dry for a day or two. By the time I went back, convinced I needed to start again, I decided to reapply the stencil before spraying with DecoArt Media Misters...thinking nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Quite liking the result I added a sentiment from the Subway Art Builders: Create set and I was done.

As you can see there was a little deviation involved....I can't even remember what my original project was going to be! I'll surprise myself another day when I get around to using that piece :)

Materials used:

ARTplorations: Floral Flutes and Happy Flowers stencils

STAMPlorations: Mixed Media Elements and Subway Art Builders: Create stamp sets

Distress Spray Stains, Crackle Paste and DecoArt Media Misters