Mixology II - Andy Skinner

Hello all, I'm back again to share what I made in Andy Skinner's fabulous class on the second day of the Ministry of Mixology workshops the weekend before last.  I did mean to share all this before, but things got a bit busy blog-wise as well as in the real world!  You can check out the results of Saturday's class here at Mixology I - Michelle Webb if you missed it.

With Andy we got rusty and industrial...

... and I loved it - no surprises anywhere there, I suppose.

We altered some notebook covers which must have been specially designed for the Mixology weekend, judging by the words pre-cut into their edges!

Again, I'm not going to share all the ins and outs of how it was done - though Andy has Youtube videos available of quite a few of these techniques...












For instance, here's how to do the Mega-Crackle which forms the main background effect.  And there are lots more great DecoArt tutorials by Andy if you take a look.











I'm really excited that he's going to be one of the teachers on Wanderlust 2016 next year... looking forward to seeing what he comes up with for that!

I was a bit of a naughty child again about colours, opting out of the bright red and yellow he was encouraging us to use for the undercoat and sticking to my blue and green guns.











But both Andy and Michelle (see yesterday's colour-naughtiness!) are fantastic teachers who, as well as sharing their in-depth knowledge and amazing techniques, want to encourage your individual creativity - so I think they welcome the maverick approach (within reason!!).













When it came to adding the colour washes at the end, blue/green/brown was also where I ended up.  I know... one day I might push the boat out, but at the moment what makes me happy is what makes me happy, so I'm sticking with it.












We had lots of fun altering cogs and nuts and bolts from the new Andy Skinner Industrial Elements kit from Tando using DecoArt paints and mediums.












You can hardly believe all of this started out as plain old chipboard, can you?
















Rusting...















Weathering...












Chipping...














Distressing...















And all done with paint (and a bit of Andy knowhow!).











You end up with something that could have been retrieved from a forgotten attic or that's been sitting neglected out in the garden for an age.













I do love the font of the pre-cut words.















I hope Tando will produce something similar to this for sale.  Or maybe they already do - must check.  UPDATE: They do now!!













I spent quite a lot of time adding shading to bed the cogs and other elements into the background, and still had time to seal the whole thing with the Ultra Matte Medium, so none of that crackle is going anywhere, I'm happy to say!












Huge thanks to Andy for another inspiring day and another brilliant project.  And of course to Di and Tando for organising the whole event.  Hopefully there'll be many more Ministries of Mixology to come!

Thanks to all of you too for stopping by, and for your always much-appreciated comments.  I'm still in Norway, but hope to do some more visiting in between workshops (voice/text work, not craft).  Happy Crafting all!

We travel to ancient times by reading history books.
Lailah Gifty Akita