Acrylic Background Tutorial

Hello and welcome! This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge we have a Make Your Own Background theme. A favourite of mine since I really love to make my own backgrounds. Since this is the first Monday of a new month, the team is showcasing a specific company/designer, and its Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions range by Ranger.

Our guest designer for March is Linda Kunsman, don't forget to check out her stunning work.

I made an art journaling page this week, and took some step photos too.

If you have never tried art journaling, I hope you will give it a go. I find that it is very freeing to work in my art journals, and I also love to look through them, remembering when I made certain pages. The techniques on this page can be used on any type of projects too of course. I used Dylusions paints and stencils to create the background for this bright and cheerful page. Anton's comment was 'wow, that's a lot of colour'. 

For this page, I used my brand-new Large Creative Flip Journal. It is the same size as the original large Dylusions journal, but it is horizontal instead. You can of course also make vertical pages - hence the 'flip' name, and you can even make really tall vertical pages if you work across a spread. 

Start out by applying gesso to the lower two-thirds of the page, using a palette knife and kind of creating waves. Anton helped me with this part and wanted a curved horizon line instead of a straight one (which is what I was planning). Then apply a thin layer of Ranger's new Opaque Crackle Paste at the top part. Leave to dry and cracks will appear.

Using only a palette knife, I applied paints to the page. The paints were mixed right on the page and for the lighter blue areas towards the horizon, I painted some white on the page first and then added the blue on top mixing it with the white. Before the paint was dry, I used the Bubbles stencil to rub off paint from the sea part with a slightly moist cloth.

I added some black around the top and bottom edges to darken them down, and splattered a whole lot of white paint on the sea area. I used the Distress Splatter Brush to splatter the paint.

The idea behind the page came from these party hats from the Dylusions Doolally Dorris set. I thought they looked like paper boats. Stamp them once on mixed media cardstock.

Stamp again on white paper.

Cut out the boat part from the mixed media cardstock and glue to the white boats. I used Tim's new smaller scissors Mini Snips. Love them.

When the paint was dry, I doodled a bit on the background, making the horizon line stand out stronger to separate the sea from the sky, adding waves to the water and a few circles here and there.

When my boats were done, I got the idea of adding some additional words to them and used Tim's new Chatter Design Tape to cut out words, and a piece of deco tape.

The boats look kind off small and alone on that rough sea, but very persistent and brave.

I usually use Distress Paint when I splatter paint and it was fun seeing that the white Dylusions paint behaved a differently. I didn't water down the paint at all, and the paint formed this cool mix of lines and splatters, which I really liked.

Keep smiling comes from the SSS Hand Lettered Encouragement set, and refers to the Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, 'Just keep swimming' mantra. Sometimes that is all you can do.

Three more little boats. 

This sentiment stamp comes from the SSS Sail Away set and I really like it.

As you can see, the blue and yellow paint blended on the page to form a greenish turquoise.

I love the look of crackles and I really liked these thin ones. If you apply the paste thicker, you get larger cracks. I washed in some black paint in the cracks, mixing it with water first.

You can also doodle on top of the cracks. I placed the title for the top of the page on a curve on my acrylic block and then cut it into a banner.

I really hope you will join us in our Make Your Own Background. As every week, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp. You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

Dyan Reaveley DOOLALLY DORRIS	Ranger Dylusions LARGE CREATIVE FLIP JOURNAL	Dyan Reaveley Stencil 5 x 8 BUBBLES	Dyan Reaveley Stencil 5 x 8 SQUARES SMALL	Ranger Dylusions Paint LONDON BLUE
Ranger Dylusions Paint SQUEEZED ORANGE	Ranger Dylusions Paint LEMON ZEST	Ranger Dylusions Paint WHITE LINEN	Ranger Dylusions Paint BLACK MARBLE	Simon Says SAIL AWAY
Simon Says Clear Stamps HAND LETTERED ENCOURAGEMENT	Tim Holtz CHATTER Design Tape	Tim Holtz LABEL LETTERS	Ranger TEXTURE PASTE OPAQUE CRACKLE	Dina Wakley Ranger WHITE GESSO
Ranger Archival Ink Pad JET BLACK	Tim Holtz Distress Ink GROUND ESPRESSO	Neenah Classic Crest 80 LB SUPER SMOOTH SOLAR WHITE	Ranger MIXED MEDIA CARDSTOCK	Tim Holtz Tonic MINI SNIPS
Ranger Inkssentials GLOSSY ACCENTS	Tim Holtz Distress SPLATTER BRUSH	Hero Arts CLEAR ACRYLIC BLOCK 3 by 3	Dina Wakley Ranger PALETTE KNIFE	Ranger Inkssentials Non Stick CRAFT SHEET

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