CSI case file #79 - Spider-man

Hello and welcome! Here's this week's CSI:Color, Stories, Inspiration challenge:

I was looking through some photos, not sure of what to do my layout about and came up on some Spider-man photos, which turned into a somewhat unusual layout.

From the evidence items I used: rub-ons, dots, pompom trim, metal and ribbon, and from the testimony I used the idea of listing four things. I had just gotten hold of a to me new medium and wanted to try it out, Golden's Clear Tar Gel, a cool, stringy gel.

I started by covering watercolour cardstock with gesso, when it was dry I painted red on top. Blue paint was mixed into a bit of Tar Gel and left to stand a few hours, so that the bubbles formed during mixing can escape. The gel is the same colour as the darkest blue in the colour combo, but because it is transparent, it looks almost black on the red background.  I applied the gel with a palette knife and should have practiced a bit on a scrap paper first, but it was late in the evening and I wanted to get the gel down so that it would be dry in the morning. You don't have full control with this technique, and I dropped thicker pools of gel here and there as you can see, and got the hang of it better after a little while.

 

I let it dry overnight and then stamped a spider web blueprint stamp here and there with Stazon ink, and dots with Picket Fence Distress Paint (always clean your stamp immediately after stamping with paint). Finally I distressed the edges with black paint and dry-brushed a little bit of black paint here and there.

I had left-over gel and smeared it with a palette knife on a piece of watercolour paper. When it was dry, I die cut a label from it, using Karen Burniston's Funky Labels die. I stamped it with the same dot as on the background, but with Jet Black Stazon ink. The letters were die cut with the Wanted Alphabet die.

My son happened to see the background before the layout was finished and loved it, so I knew he would be upset if I covered a large part of it up with photos. The solution was to mount the photos on patterned paper and cardstock and attach them with hinges. A third photo and the journaling were placed on the inside. The journaling is about his interest in Spider-man, which is a character he has never really seen on TV. His only exposure is from friends and from seeing Spider-man stuff in the shop. The Spider-man balloon on the photo was a big hit, although it didn't survive very long and a Spider-man Pez in his Easter egg was lots of fun too, especially since he thought I had bought it from someone else (he spotted it in the shopping trolley, although I had tried to hide it). Under the photo it says: 'You like Spider-man because: he is cool and can 'fly', spiders are scary, he is a bit mysterious because you don't really know that much about him, and he is a favourite among some of your friends." But no one can beat Lightning McQueen in popularity here. I also added a few random funny things he said during the time when these photos were taken.

Here you might be able to see the gloss and dimension of the spider web a little bit better. You can also spot the bubbles, which appeared because I wasn't patient enough to leave the mix of paint and gel overnight, so that the bubbles from the mixing had time to disappear completely.

Thank you for looking! I hope you have a chance to play along with us at CSI this week.

Anna-Karin

Supplies:
Surfaces: Daler & Rowney watercolour paper; 7 Gypsies Ledger Postale 8 x 8 paper; Core'dinations Tim Holtz color-core cardstock; Crate patterned paper
Dies: Sizzix: Funky Labels, Tiny Tabs & Tags, Wanted Alphabet, Party Set #2
Stamps: Stamper's Anonymous Tim Holtz Mini Blueprints, Tiny Textures
Ink: Stazon Jet Black
Paint: Distress Paint: Bundled Sage, Picket Fence; Golden Artist Paint: Pyrrole Red, Carbon Black, Anthraquinone Blue
Medium: Golden Artist Paint: Clear Tar Gel, Gesso
Embellishments: Tim Holtz Idea-ology: Elements tissue tape, Remnant rubs: Numbers, Elements; Prime Junkyard Findings Jeans Buttons, Screw Heads; hinges; pom pom ribbon; ric rac