It's Patina Time!

Hello all!  I hope you are staying safe and well wherever you are. 

I'm so glad you enjoyed some spring sunlight on my Spring Greens pages with me.  There will be some more springtime creating along soon, I've no doubt. 

But I'm in a different mode today with this textural tag full of crackle and weathered patina effects.

I'll try to keep the words to a minimum, though there will as usual be plenty of pictures.

I was originally thinking of creating more of a partner piece to the Full of Bright Hopes tag, with maybe a Paper Doll or two involved.

I hadn't intended to go down this metal-heavy, patina'd look... but some already patina'd metal embellishments hanging around on the craft desk had other ideas!













The Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is inviting us to indulge in some Stencil Fun, which gave me an excellent excuse to try out this glorious new Prima Gothic font stencil.














I thought it would be fun to apply some crackle paste through it - this is the Ranger Opaque version - because I always have fun with crackle!
















I added some random smears around the edges with the palette knife.
















Once it was all nice and dry and cracked, I gave it some spritzes of Distress Spray - Vintage Photo and Rusty Hinge mainly, with a touch of Pumice Stone somewhere under there.














For contrast, I flicked and smooshed some Distress Oxides - Broken China, Peacock Feathers and Cracked Pistachio at this point.

Then, of course, I needed to figure out what to put over the top of it all.












This clock was one I used to experiment with the wonderful VerDay patina paints when I first got them about five years ago. 

I'm not sure whether it ever made its way on to a project which later got dismantled or whether it's never made an appearance at all... 









... but it's been sitting in my bits and bobs bowl on my craft table forever.

When I reached for it and put it against the crackled font, I knew I was on to something.












The large cog was in the bits and bobs bowl, patina-ready - I think done with Fresco paints way back when.  Again, I'm not sure whether it came off a dismantled early project or whether it just never got used.













I did do some present-day patina altering of a couple of other cogs, and added splotches of the same new colours to the already-done ones to make sure everything toned in nicely. 

 Mostly I used Distress Paints.













Broken China, Evergreen Bough, Peacock Feathers and Twisted Citron all played a part.

Some stayed unaltered to match the background.












I also created some extra spatter with those colours onto the background to keep everything nice and harmonious.













The Word Band got the same Distress Paint treatment, and the final touch with all the embellishments was to sand back a bit in places to reveal the gleam of metal again.












I found a great way to use up the leftover smooshes of paint on the craft mat... I rolled this bit of chain in them so that it would end up with a nice weathered patina too, ready to take its place at the top of the tag.














The whole thing is mounted on some thick scrap cardboard for extra sturdiness to bear the weight of all that distressed metal...















... as well as all that chunky crackle!

So that's your lot.  I hope you like it.  I certainly had lots of fun making it.










There's endless delight for me in creating weathered, crackled, distressed, aged and antiqued effects.  The quote at the foot of the post today is probably a decent crack at trying to understand why they appeal to me so much.

And it's nice to have some bolder colour in action for a change too.  Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I'll be round for some (non-infectious) visiting soon, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you've been up to.  Take care, stay safe, and virtual hugs to all.

Monuments are anchors in time. Epochs pass, weather erodes, people lose interest. This cannot be helped. But patina itself is worth appreciating. Patina is the value that age puts on an object. It’s what makes an antique antique. It is experience, maturity, the soft sheen of time. Patina wasn’t present at the spanking-new creation. It comes from a life lived.
John Yemma

I'd like to play along with the Stencil Fun over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
At the More Mixed Media Challenge it's still Anything Goes with an Optional Twist of Green