No Brushes Allowed!

It's Street Team Challenge time!

 

Last month was Text Messaging and thank you to everyone who encouraged me with their kind comments. It is truly a joy to participate in these challenges. I learn new things every time not only from working on my own project but also from seeing what all of you come up with in your interpretations of the challenge. It is so much fun to meet and hear from new friends from all over the world.

This month: In A Scrape, No Brushes Allowed. This month we were to scrape on layers of gesso and paint using an old credit card or flat edged tool to result in a grungy, textured background. My cup of tea, I love to work in layers and get messy! I was really excited to experiment with gesso as I have not used it that much. Now, I will use it a lot! The gesso and paint react to each other in interesting ways and create really cool textures together. So, without further adieu...

I began by layering brown acrylic paint over a layer of gesso and layering another coat of gesso over the brown. The layers created an interesting effect together. While that was drying...

I went back to a couple of earlier challenges (#27) & (#19) and created some stencils and masks. I made them out of old manila folders. I used these and scraped colors onto my background.

Then, using my stencils, I added a couple of stars in the corners and wrote a couple of quotes with a white gel pen.

I couldn't stop there, so here are a couple of others:

This one was made with some cool stencils I purchased from Tattered Angels. I absolutely love them. I think they work better with brushes or by spraying paint or ink on them. Scraping the paint across them required a lot of paint to cover the intricate details and it became really thick. After drying overnight, however, it has a really cool texture.

On this one, I started with gesso and scraped on some black plum acrylic paint. Then I spritzed on some water and let it set for a few minutes, scraped again and voila, cool splatters. I'll use this grungy background for something else later. 

Thanks, Michelle, for another great challenge. I learned so much on this one!