Rusted Texture Galore

Hello all!  Hope you've all been having a great week.  I'm here to share a project I created at a recent Andy Skinner workshop at Country View Crafts.

I think Andy's work and paint techniques are brilliant, and I've been lucky enough to go to a couple of his workshops over the years, though this was the first one for a while that has fitted into my schedule.

Although I was on the Design Team at Country View Crafts for a couple of years, this was the first time I've been to their lovely workshop venue.

I had a great time, and I'm sure it won't be my last visit now that I've worked out the trains aren't completely impossible.

We had a fantastic time trying out Andy's new Lava Paste by Cosmic Shimmer... it's astonishing how many different kinds of effects you can get, simply by applying it in different ways and in different thicknesses.










We were also exploring the new paint line Andy has with Cosmic Shimmer, and you'll see from the close-ups here that they achieve superb rusty effects over the wild and wonderful Lava Paste textures.













It's hard to believe that all this started with just two blank MDF panels.  They're quite heavyweight panels, really very pleasingly sturdy, and well able to cope with all the mixed media goodness about to come their way.

It's a large panel - the big base one is about 8 x 11.5 inches, so about the same as a piece of A4 paper.














We had an extra ATC-sized piece of MDF to practise on - here's the lava paste applied quite thickly with a palette knife...















... and here's what happens when you heat it with a heat gun!  (Sorry for the blur in the foreground, I didn't notice I had smeared my camera lens in all the excitement.)










And then we played with adding some of the new paints Andy has produced with Cosmic Shimmer.  I stuck to my trusted palette of Payne's Gray/Prussian Blue/Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide/Quinacridone Gold for my rusted look.











On the large piece, we had a choice of about ten different printed images to work with.

I went with this rather wonderful vintage song sheet cover.  

As you can see, it's for a song called Amanda, which is - as it says in the subtitle - a response to an earlier song by the same lyricist and composer called L'Amant d'Amanda.  (Yes, I had to come home and look it up - that's just the way I am!)












It's had various dirty washes of paint to make it look even more vintage and distressed, and of course there's some splatter too.







But the real point of this creation was the lava paste.  Just look at it bubbling up around the edges.

And right on the edge of the smaller panel, it's still the lava paste, but here applied much more thinly, and gently patted into place.  (Do click on these smaller photos for a closer look.)







I love the gritty look this gives you, just perfect for rusted textures.  









The nuts and bolts are just greyboard, believe it or not...

... with Andy's genius paint combinations added to give you the perfect rusted metal look.







You can probably tell that there's some corrugated cardboard offering up additional texture and dimension in the corners.















But it gets an extra distressed look from some more lava paste applied in places. 















I concentrated my Quinacridone Gold/Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide colours near these bolts so that they "drip" down to give an impression of realistic rusting patterns where water might drip and carry the rusty contagion.















Part of the joy of the lava paste is the randomness of the results.

You know approximately what you'll get from how you're applying it, but you're not in control of the specifics!
















We had a bit of time to spare at the end of the workshop, so we also had a play with the new Strata Paste on a little greyboard square.

This is about the size of an ATC, but not quite.









The Strata Paste has a wonderful stony texture like shale.

Quite apart from any regular crafting uses, I think it could be really useful for dollshouse work.

It was such fun to have a playful day following Andy's instructions without having to think too much.  I hope you enjoy the results as much as I do!

Thanks so much for stopping by today and I hope you all have a lovely peaceful Sunday.

It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.
Lord Byron