Art Recipe Wednesday: Rusted Beauty

Hi again friends, it's great you are visiting us again!
When you are reading this post I'm probably somewhere on the way home from Prima headquarters where I had great chance to present my new Mixed-Media products to the group of lovely ladies during Prima Education Days for retailers.
I can't express how exciting it is to see people playing with the supplies I was thinking of for such a long time and seeing your another dream coming true thanks to the great team effort and hard work of so many people.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart - and thank you all my friends, students, supporters and followers for all the energy and love me and my CT are getting from you everyday!

Last week was very special for Creative Team - 4 of our CT members were featured on Prima Blog with their projects inspired by Art Basics Line and providing ideas and techniques to all of us. Girls prepared a lovely variety of projects and I'm sure you will find something inspiring there - be sure to check it out!

I decided to focus on one of the most underestimated and mysterious mediums from all Art Basics Line - and one of my favorite ones in the same time... Ladies and Gentlemen please give the warm welcome to one and only Clear Gesso!

It's just amazing how helpful Art Basics Gesso - Clear is for mixed-media projects. Like any other gesso, it is a primer, which provides a matte surface which is so easy to work on. But, there is great difference too - this one dries transparent! You can apply it on any surface and have a possibility to work on the background with its colors and patterns visible. It's a perfect solution for projects where you want to work with inks, paints, or pencils on slippery surfaces such as glossy pictures, photos, or even metal or plastic...

Let me show it to you in pictures!

Here is the project I've prepared for Prima Blogpost: altered cabinet card and vintage metal camera plate or tintype element colored and embellished in my signature style: including stamping, a touch of watercoloring and of course spraying.

You surely know how much I love all the flea market findings and collecting all the items that have history and this special magic in them... then I saw a bunch of these metal photo types I just had to buy them and try to use them - and this project seem to be a perfect choice! As an inspiration I took one of my "adopted family members" - beautiful young woman from Prague... I keep wondering who she was?

I was sure my Vintage Vanity Stamps with old adverts will be matching this photo perfectly - as well as a bunch of fabric, lace and Prima Mechanicals combined with Junkyard Findings. Of course I couldn't resist and i opened one of my rubbish boxes with buttons and pins too!

Final color of this project comes from Prima Color Bloom Sprays, touch of watercolor pencils and a bit of wonderful, shiny Inka Gold - and thanks to Clear Gesso it was really easy to apply all of my colored mediums! Now, let's look more into details:

Are you ready? Here is new Art Recipe with step-by-step tutorial for you!

1. I started the project working on the old cabinet card I had in my collection. Because the surface was glossy I covered it with a coat of Art Basics Clear Gesso - and when it was dry it turned into beautifully matte, easy to work on surface (how cool is that?). Next I stamped it a bit with Archival Ink (Jet Black) and Vintage Vanity Stamps to create more artistic vintage look.

2. Clear Gesso makes it possible to work on your project with any kind of colored products - paints, inks, pastes. I decided to use watercolor pencils and I blended my colors blended with waterbrush to get nice and smooth, watercolor effect.

3. My next step was embellishing: I guess you can't go wrong with fabric and lace when creating something in vintage style, right? Of course as usual I wanted to add a bit of "heavier" look to my little collage so I used a selection of my Mechanicals and Ingvild's Junkyard Findings which I glued down to the plate and photo with 3D Matte Gel - medium which is not only great to create texture but also great dimensional glue. For Gluing in the Art Ingredients - Glass Beads I used my Soft Matte Gel.
When it was ready I dried it for a moment with heating tool to make sure they will stay in place and I covered all my slippery embellishments such as metals or plastics with a coat of Clear Gesso to  help my paints to stay on them. When the Clear Gesso was dry I spayed them with Color Bloom Sprays and dried them again.

Here is an extra tip:
Thanks to Clear Gesso you can turn your glossy, slippery surfaces such as photos or metal embellishments into matte - ready to apply colors! Here are the examples of the effects you can get using acrylic paint, Color Bloom Spray, and Colored Pencil working on metal covered with Clear Gesso and without it. So easy - and so cool!

4. My final touches to the projects were made with a set of watercolor pencils on the metal embellishments (yes!) - of course blended a bit with water - and Inka Gold, which is metallic rub in Gold color. I was so happy to see I was able to use  the same set of watercolors as on my photo on my metal embellishments too! Great solution!

 For extra protection of the project you can always spray it with a bit of fixative. I just love how this project turned out - I hope you like it too! Any comments? I'd love to hear back from you!

Here is the list of products from Mixed Media Place shop - for your reference:

I will be back during the weekend with my next blog post - and please make sure you will check us out on Friday for the next great post from my Creative Team!
I wish you all wonderful, creative time!
Huge hugs