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.