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Friday, August 15, 2014

Amazing Crackled Paint


Hi friends!  Let me tell you a little story about this card.  See that crackled paint background?  That all came about because of two things - a cleaning spree and a Dare to Get Dirty challenge.

Several weeks ago, I got into a cleaning fit in my studio and I came across my old jars of Distress Crackle Paint from Ranger.  Remember when they were brand new?  Yeah, I bought almost every color because I just knew I was gonna use them all the time.  Flash forward to present day, and these 20 or 30 bottles were all dusty.  Some even still had the plastic wrap on them, never been opened.  

So.... I thought I'd open one and just paint a few backgrounds for the heck of it.  The open bottle revealed a solid hard chunk of rock inside.  The paint was completely and totally dried up.  ACK!  NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!  So I pulled out ALLLLL of the bottles and opened them, one by one.  Out of all those bottles, only about 7 were not completely dried out.  

But when I say "not completely dried out," that doesn't mean they were still liquidy and flowy and paintable.  Oh no.  These were more like silly putty or clay, honestly.  So I stuck my finger into a bottle of Old Paper Distress Crackle Paint, dug out the sticky dough, and spread it all over some cardstock.  Hey, might as well try it, huh?  My tester piece seemed to work okay, so I set about using up whatever leftover paints I could before tossing all of them into the trash.

Then the Dare to Get Dirty challenges came around about a week or two after I painted up all these backgrounds.  One of the challenges was an inspiration challenge with a gorgeous inspiration picture showing a door with crackled green paint on it.  Coincidence???  However, none of the paints that I could salvage were green.  Hmmmmmm......  Upon looking through my crackled paint backgrounds, the ones with the Old Paper paint had possibilities.  I pulled out some Sage distress ink and sponged it all over the Old Paper crackled paint background.  Hey, whadaya know, it worked!  

Next, because the inspiration picture had some gorgeous peach-colored flowers in it, I pulled out my Azalea stamp set from Power Poppy and colored the flowers with some pale peach-y Copic markers.  The sentiment on this card is also from the Azalea stamp set, and I finished off the card with a little bit of linen twine.

Did you know that Power Poppy has a fun challenge called Peep of the Week?  Most weeks, it's anything goes and you can enter your cards/projects into the challenge as long as you use a Power Poppy stamp on it.  This week is one of those Anything Goes challenges, and I'm entering this card into their challenge.  I was fortunate to be named one of their Peeps of the Week last month and that was so exciting!!  Here is hoping I am picked again!!  :-)

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!



5 comments:

Beth Norman-Roberts said...

You got really creative. Lovely results. Beautiful card.

Tosha Leyendekker said...

Your azaleas are beautiful in that soft peach color! And your textured background is a fantastic contrast!! Thanks for joining our Power Poppy Peeps challenge this week!

Anonymous said...

Way to salvage your crackle paint and a beautiful result to boot! I'm going to keep my eye on my crackle paint ;)

Leslie Miller said...

Funny you should mention this... I got my Rock Candy (clear) crackle paint out to use it the other day and it, too, was a solid putty mass. I had used it several times, so it wasn't a total loss, but there was still quite a good bit remaining. Totally unusable. I have some green that I've never even opened, so I guess I might as well check it. Probably throw it out, too. You certainly did a brilliant job of salvaging some of yours! It's definitely a cool background, and the green looks great with the apricot blooms. Very pretty, Holly! Oh, and thanks for playing! Good luck!

ChristineCreations said...

The crackle paint is so cool as a background. Glad you were able to salvage some of it for this pretty design! Beautiful design! Thanks for playing with us at Power Poppy!