Background Techniques Tutorial

Dana here and sit back with a cup of something, because it's a long one!! It's my turn at bat to bring you a tutorial and you would think I would do something with copics, right? But lately I have been having so much fun playing in my art journal and a big part of that is creating backgrounds. It is actually creating backgrounds for some jewelry pieces I was making last year that got me hooked on cardmaking to begin with.
I started by covering a 8x10" piece of paper with a script stamp but you could use anything.

 I used Staz-On because in subsequent processes I am going to use wet products and I wanted the script to stay crisp. The next product that is instrumental for this was Gel Multi Medium. I prefer the matte finish but that is definitely a personal choice. I painted that onto a chunky stamp and stamped randomly all over the paper:

Depending on how thick you paint it on you can achieve some gorgeous textures:

Can you see the little peaks?? The next part is so much fun and  magical to see the pattern pop through. You can also use clear embossing powder but that will make the text under the stamp shiny. This process keeps the text uniform throughout the whole piece. Start to blend in some Tim Holtz Distress Inks using the blending tool. I've used Dusty Concord, Broken China and Tumbled Glass.

Next I used the gel medium to coat a regular paper doily (found in the cake decorating sections of most craft and grocey stores) front and back.  Once dry (it dries very quickly) it is waterproof and you can use it over and over not only as a mask but also to turn it over after spraying with Fireworks and stamp with the excess spray:

Check out the gorgeous masks that Lora is carrying!! I must have them all ; ) Next I used  Glimmer Mist spray. I used Gold but so many colors would've worked. 

It's really starting to look like a piece of batik fabric now. Next I added some butterfly stamps and scroll stamps again with StazOn after cutting my paper down to 5 1/2 x 5 1/2. That's the size cards I most commonly make and I wanted the scrolls to be around the outside. Those blue scrolls you see are acutally on the paper towel that was under my cardstock.

Next I used some diluted gel medium to paint the butterflies with some Pearl  Ex powders:

Stick with me, we're almost done.. lol! The only things left was to distress the edges and add the sentiment from Amy R.

Check out some of the new gorgeous shapes Lora is carrying from Spellbinders!!  I added some simple outlining here and there with a white gel pen to really make the butterflies pop out.
I hope you will enter our recipe challenge this month.  Make sure to check back in tomorrow to see what the marvelous Madge has in store for you : )
Hugs~