Tuesday 28 March 2017

Infusions Mini-Album–Finishing Recent Samples, and More Stamping

After the last session there were a couple of samples that needed further work. I had left the samples under heavy books overnight and for most of today and they are more or less flat now, although the one with the gesso texture still has a tendency to curl.

Looking at the weathered woodgrain sample with the crackle paste on it, I was delighted to find that where the paste was thicker, cracks had indeed appeared against my expectations. As it says on the crackle paste pot, this finish is fairly fragile so I handled it carefully. I applied the same infusions onto the sample again – Sunset Beach, Golden Sands and Black Knight – as before, creating a puddle on my non-stick craft sheet and using a fan brush to create horizontal brush-strokes, going over the top of the crackle paste. The Infusions settled into the cracks, showing them up nicely.

64 Crackle Paste Completed

Once it was dry, I painted on a thin coating of soft matte gel medium to stabilise and strengthen the surface. Golden recommends that some sort of top coat is applied to protect it.

65 Crackle Paste Completed

Looking at the gesso texture sample, I was pleased with how it had turned out, but decided it needed something extra, so I applied a very light touch of gold gilding wax over the raised parts. This is a lot more shiny and gold than shows in this photo.

66 Gesso Sample with Gilding Wax

Here’s a detail shot which shows the gold a bit better.

67 Gesso Sample with Gilding Wax Detail

These are the recent samples I made, now all completed.

68 Recent Samples

A while ago I noted down a couple of techniques I’d seen online, and decided to try them. The first was to stamp with Versamark or other embossing ink, and then to apply Infusions, stippling them on with a dry brush, and tapping off the excess. After this, the sample was lightly misted with water, taking care not to saturate the sample.

I used Olive Tree from set 2, and the stamp was from StampAttack’s “Real Leaves” set.

69 Stamping with Versamark

I was quite pleased with this result.

70 Stamping with Versamark

I did another one, using a ginkgo leaf stamp from the same set, and Emerald Isle Infusions from set 2, but the result was very unsatisfactory because the colour was too light. This technique obviously works best with the darker coloured Infusions – you can see from the above sample how subtle the result is. Also, I think stamps without too much detail work best. I am not sure this is a technique I shall use very often.

The other technique I found was to apply Versamark with a piece of Cut-n-Dry foam through a stencil, but I didn’t have any success with this so abandoned the attempt.

I think I’ve more or less explored all the different ways of using Infusions, apart from mixing them with paint/gesso/gel mediums – I’ll have a play with these and see what happens!

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