Back to basics

Having not an ounce of ooomph right now

but still having the yearning to get down & dirty with the art stuff

I decided to just get out the products I enjoy using most of all

those products that had me tingling when I first came across them

Grunge paste & embossing powders, crackle paste and rust paste

all the stuff I never imagined would enter my world

but which sent my crafting in a whole new direction

Was only planning on doing one little canvas yesterday

but was soon drawn back into my much preferred grungy & 

imperfect little world

Did this one first ...

a ton of Finnabair's crackle paste - left to dry overnight so you get the best crackles in the world

Sprayed with more ink than you'd think possible

spray - dry ... spray - dab - dry ... spray & dry some more

and so on and on and on until I was happy with the colour

Mostly used Lindy's sprays but have to admit to Tim Holtz's Distress Spray coming into the mix ... Chipped Sapphire, of course

Finnabair's modelling paste through a stencil & then sprinkled with Seth Apter's Baked Textures (which have a tingle factor all of their own) & then heat embossed until it splutters & spurtles ... 

can't beat a good splutter & spurtle!!!

One of my all time favourite products is Finnabair's original Rust Paste Set 

would rust up everything if I could 

Finn has lots of variations of these pastes out now but I am struggling with any of the new colour combinations ... just can't seem to get even a half decent effect - as my last canvas here will prove!

Not giving up and will just keep trying!

Enjoying myself way too much I decided to do another

wanted it the same but different

if you get my drift

Monochrome sort of called to me but it felt too "flat" so a touch of colour accent was deemed necessary

trouble is, what colour?!?!?!?!?!

Rarely use purple so purple it was

in and out of my comfort zone in one fell swoop!

Same crackle paste background - this time dried in a couple of hours as it was so hot 

Lindy's sprays again and then Tim Holtz's Distress Resist sprayed through my favourtie stencil ... once that has dried I used a silver spray by Sweet Poppy to make it stand out

Triple embossed mdf heart using Seth Apter's Baked Textures with Finnabair's wax stroked over to highlight the, er, hightlights

Various Finn's glass glitter, micro beads & mica flakes added 

 

 Then, because I was having way too much fun I did a third

just little 6" canvas boards so they don't take up too much room

Background this time was Finnabair's newly released Stone Wall Effect Paste

to be honest my heart sank a little when her new releases gave us four new sets of rust paste ... I have still to even open three of her previous sets -

yes, they scare me that much!

But I quite liked the look of the Stone Wall effect one so thought I'd give it a go

Not at all happy with it but got to start somewhere, right?

The embossed heart was one from playing earlier but was never really happy with it so, great thing about triple embossing is who is counting?

This one was probably embossed five or six times and I did slip a bit when stamping the bee but hey, imperfect grunge, right?

As Tim would say, "just get over yourself"

so I did