Singing the blues!

I'm starting to notice that a lot of the stuff I do is predominantly blue!  This piece is no different, but mental note to self to try other colours - I don't seem to use green at all!

My very first post for this blog was about the sign I made with Paper Artsy at the Sandown show in January.  I wanted to try the technique again.  The original sign was made with pre-cut grungeboard letters, but I couldn't find my grungeboard or grungepaper, so I used hot pressed 140lb watercolour paper.  I did several die-cuts, and adhered to a canvas board using matt medium, then gave everything another coat of matt medium.

Using Fresco paints, covered everything with Ice Blue, then used Mermaid to roughly go over the die-cuts.  Dried with heat gun.

Changed to translucent Pea Coat, again roughly going over where the die-cuts are, but then wiping back with a wetwipe.  Then used Claret (another translucent colour) over the same areas, again wiping back with a wetwipe.  I repeated this process with both colours until I liked the look, then really rubbed over some of the die-cut areas with the wetwipe, taking the paint back to the light blue.

The watercolour paper is quite robust, but not really the best thing to use for this technique, all that rubbing with wetwipes takes its toll!  Must find the grungeboard/paper.

Treasure Gold guilding wax is lovely stuff, so to finish I brushed some over the raised areas.  With Treasure Gold less is definitely more!

Like this look; will have another play with different colours on grungepaper.  Here's the finished piece.