Tough Text Transfer

I was so excited when I saw today's Mixability Challenge today at splitcoaststampers. Polly challenged us to use a technique that transfers text onto our projects. I picked up Claudia Helmuth's book on collage a little while ago and I've read it through 2 times and have been chomping at the bit to give some of the techniques a go. Lucky for me, one of the techniques was the very one from the challenge today! I pulled out a thrift store wood plaque to start. I began by putting a coat of Aqua acrylic paint onto the plaque.

I then mixed some black and dark blue paint together and thinned with some water to create a glaze (Claudia technique #2). I painted that over the whole piece then used a paper towel to wipe off most of it. 

I used Matte Gel Medium with a scraper to add the text transfer. Gel onto plaque, paper over gel, burnish well with scraper then peel off paper.

I glued some words that I tore out of the same article. We had a series of 4 deaths in our small community right around Christmas and the community was really rocked. I had an article from our small town paper and used that for this piece.

I didn't like how white the paper looked so I took my toweling from removing the glaze to dab some paint over the top. 

I saved the wand from a used up mascara and scraped some bronze paint around the piece.

Here's the final outcome with lots of extra stuff collaged around. I think I still need to work with Claudia's editing process a bit more. I always seem to end up with a more is more mindset instead of her approach of, "does this need to be there?"

I did some more transfer to the sides and other "bare spots" at the end of my piece as I'd covered up a lot of the transfer with "stuff" I went back and added some of the original aqua color to lighten up some areas and I used a transparent brown gel on others to darken and add some shading. My tree is stamped on vellum in Stazon and colored with markers. I had intended to use the piece front side up, but ended up with it backwards to have more vibrancy from the colors since the bg piece was dark.  

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I am really enjoying Bible Journaling. This one features a lot of stenciling using sprays and Metallic Lustre Paste as well as some recycled cut outs from a coffee sleeve and flyer.

I sprayed Distress Ink Spray-Picked Raspberry through the stencil. I then flipped that stencil down onto another sheet of paper to use that "extra" ink for another purpose later. I then sprayed Heidi Swapp Blush Color Spray through that and then laid that back onto my Bible page to get the blush onto the page.

I was experimenting with prepping the back side of the page to see if that would help with bleed through but alas, it didn't work.

Used Micron pens and Gel pens to accent the stencils and add my verses. A glue pen made a way to add accents with micro beads.

My Starbucks accents. I traced around the heart with a glitter pen and around the cups with a Mambo marker.

Lots of gel pen and smeared inks on this side of the page.