Casting Call!

Before the month is through, I have to jump in on Michelle Ward's GPP Street Team Crusade No. 20, Casting Call. Nope, she isn't making a movie. Our leader is encouraging us to make paper casts. And you cannot say you don't have what you need to do this one!

Following the lead of another Crusader, Maralena Howard, I tried toilet tissue. Yes, plain old TP, spritzed with water, laid over a deeply etched unmounted rubber stamp. I used a big paint brush with relatively stiff bristles to encourage the paper into the crevices of the stamp, added a couple more layers, encouraging each with the brush, then let it dry. (I let it dry overnight due to other circumstances. It just needs to be dry and a hair dryer or heat gun could be used for this purpose.)

The TP was white Cottonelle. After it dried in the mould, I spritzed it with Merlot Glimmer Mist, dried that with a heat gun, then dry-brushed Gold Fine Golden heavy body acrylic over it. That didn't seem enough so I was going to add black by stamping it with the same stamp, but inked. That didn't really take well - it might have been a little too damp? I realized that I don't have any black acrylic paint! I must but goodness only knows where. So I dug out the China Black Twinkling H2O and used my tiniest brush to add some definition with the black. The stamp is from Ma Vinci's Reliquary.

Since that was pretty cool and I'd just done a tour of all the Crusaders' blogs up through then, I tried someone else's idea too. Clare Brown (by the way, Clare, I love the name of your blog and the Gwen Diehn book, too!) used plain old tissue paper and that seemed like a good idea. I always save the colored tissue paper in which some things are wrapped. This paper is from Joggles and has some sort of sizing on it that makes for a harder, smoother, shinier surface and also keeps the layers of wet tissue from merging. Note to self, add some PPA (my favorite adhesive, Perfect Paper Adhesive) before adding the second and subsequent layers when doing this way again. I totally lost the last layer that just floated away when I picked it all up. It had barely an impression so was probably superfluous anyway.

I carefully added bits of glue to the layers and then dry-brushed with the Gold Fine acrylic. You can see one spot where the brush was too heavily loaded and I charged in with a firm hand instead of a light one. I love this stamp and use it a lot. It too is from Ma Vinci's Reliquary.

I think I want to try using facial tissue next, and wetting the tissue with spray watercolors instead of just plain old water.

Thanks for another fun time, expanding my art horizons, Michelle!