Backgrounds with Infusions, Inks and Gesso

Returning to my Card Factory for this year, over the last couple of days I have made some backgrounds using gesso with infusions, and distress inks, and have die cut circles from some of these backgrounds.

The materials used to create the gesso backgrounds.

I spread gesso onto a piece of A6 card with a palette knife, and immediately sprinkled on a mixture of Slime and Rusty Car Infusions from set 2, and spritzed it lightly with water, and brayered over it, which spreads the infusions into parallel streaks. This is the sample at top left. There was quite a mess on the desk so I brayered this on to the subsequent cards, adding Infusions as I went. The colour gradually got more blended with the gesso with each subsequent sample and all are useable and slightly different.

The finished samples.

I mopped up the rest of the mess onto an A4 sheet and added more gesso and Infusions as required. For this sample, I brayered over the top of the right-hand side of the sheet and left the other side to dry naturally.

This is the final mop-up sheet, with further Infusions added, but no additional gesso.

These two A4 sheets can be used in other projects.

From the four small A6 samples, I die cut two different sizes of circles and also some larger circles from some printed card I had in my stash.

I am keen to use up quite a bit of stuff that’s been hanging around for years – much of this card is far too brightly coloured for my taste now, or not of a pattern or design that I am that keen on, being part of sets I bought many years ago. With a bit of treatment they can look perfectly reasonable.

I cut a piece of orange card 5 inches by 10 inches and folded it in half. You can see the original colour on the scrap underneath the background piece.

I applied gesso all over, using a foam brush. This left a lot of unsightly brush marks, so I spritzed it with water and then blotted it with a crumpled up piece of kitchen paper. I applied more gesso and repeated the process until I was happy with the result.

I heat dried it, and then stamped it using the Artistic Stamper Harlequin stamp (C349) without an acrylic block, stamping fairly randomly and taking care not to press the whole thing down each time. I stamped using Iced Spruce Distress Ink, and then distressed the edges with Aged Mahogany, using a home-made ink blender.

In the above photo, you can see the matted die-cut circles laid on top. This circle will be stuck down in the centre and the card base folded in half, and I will stamp something on the die cut circle and/or add some form of embellishment.

Moving on to the next piece, I took a piece of yellow A4 card and folded it to A5, In the following photos you can see its original colour, and the results of toning it down with gesso and inks, giving a much softer and more subtle effect.

I applied the gesso, again using a foam brush, but taking care to use only vertical and horizontal brush stokes, and then spritzed it lightly with water. Once I’d heat dried it, I used the same harlequin stamp, this time with Tattered Rose Distress Ink. Using an ink duster I added a bit of Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink randomly, and finally distressed the edges with some Aged Mahogany Distress Ink (visible on the photo above). Again, you can see the die cut circles chosen to go with this particular sample.

I decided to create a different background without gesso on another piece of the yellow card. For this one, I blotted off the Iced Spruce on the harlequin stamp, over most of the surface of the card until the stamp was clean. Then I added a small amount of Slime Infusions (from set 2) and repeated the stamping process, this time using another Artistic Stamper stamp: Calligraphic Mat #12, us9ing Aged Mahogany Distress Ink.

I applied a little Hickory Smoke Distress Ink with an ink duster, and also some Milled Lavender, both with an ink duster and with a home-made blending pad to distress the edges somewhat. Finally I added a small amount of Blackcurrant Infusions from set 1, randomly here and there.

Here are the three backgrounds so far, with the die-cut circles not yet glued down. I am not sure how I am going to embellish these yet, but they will all need the heavy book treatment to flatten them out properly before then.