First Experiment Of The New Year

 Hi everyone! I hope your new year is starting out well for you.

I decided since I'm superstitious and whatever you do the first day of the year you will be doing the rest of the year to experiment. As some of you may remember my goal  for last year was to experiment and to try new things more often. Not just in crafting but in all areas of my life.

Yesterday I did my first experiment. My other goal last year and this year is to use what I have on hand. Who knew you could do so much with acrylic floor wax besides polish floors with it. ;-)

The technique I used for this card I have not seen done anywhere. I was looking at the bottle of floor wax and wondering hmmm let's try this. Oh you want to see the card instead of reading  my ramblings. O.K. Drum roll please!

The card base is from an assortment of blank cards I had bought by mistake. Most of the cards are too flimsy so I'm trying to use them up. The stamp is by Paper Studio "Cherry Blossom Bird". The ink used Black Tuxedo by Memento. The stamp is stamped on glossy photo paper.(I buy it at a dollar store when I can find it.) The lace my dear friend Myrna sent me as a Christmas present. I thought it would be perfect for this card.. The paints were some water color tube paints I had and a pearl white acrylic paint by Artist Loft.(Most of the water color tube paints were dried out and the tubes almost empty. I don't know why I have been moving them everywhere I have moved over the last fifteen years. Time for new tube paints.)

I have tried in the past to paint on photo paper but it has not worked out like I wanted it to. The paint would be absorbed into the paper so I was not able to blend like I wanted. Since the tissue paper coated with acrylic wax blended the paint so nicely on my last experiment I decided to try that with photo paper. I was not sure whether the Black ink was going to work so I stamped with that as well as the image on another piece of photo paper with Stazon ink. I will do something with that image later. Perhaps experimenting with alcohol inks over the wet acrylic wax.

I coated the whole piece of paper including the stamped image with acrylic floor wax. Don't worry if the photo paper curls it will pretty much uncurl  as you saturate the paper with the wax.I don't think you need to but I thinned both the water colors and the acrylic paint with the floor wax on my parchment paper instead of water. (For this I used nonstick parchment paper as I can toss it when I'm done. It can be a pain peeling paint off of a nonstick mat. Did I mention that I'm lazy.)

 I took my blue paint and brushed it over the entire piece of photo paper including the stamped image over the wet wax. Then I took a crumpled up piece of wrapping tissue paper and placed over my wet paint. Because the wax is tacky some of the paint will be pulled up. If you are doing this technique you can quit here when you get something you like or you can go ahead and paint the image like I did.

If the stamping does not show through the paint you can blot some of the paint off. I used a cotton swab which had been dipped in the floor wax on the feathers to remove excess paint. I love how on the breast of the bird the pattern shows through from the background.

I did not think to mix red with white pearl paint to get pink for the blossoms. The blue from the background probably would not have shown through so much in places but I like the result.

I glued the lace over the edge of my stamped image panel using floor wax. Who knew that floor wax worked as a clear glue. After everything was dry I adhered the panel to my card base and turned the card base over and ran my brayer over it to make sure that the panel was down tight and would not try to curl up. You can also of course put the card under some books to make sure that it is flat.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to paint. Lol! You are probably going to be seeing more posts which use paint. That is another goal of mine. To do more of what I love to do.

Thank you for stopping by and commenting. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy life to stop for a spell. Wishing you Happy Frugal Crating till we meet again!