That's Crafty!: Imagine – Altered Surfaces by Nikki Acton

We are delighted to announce that Nikki Acton is our guest designer for September and Nikki has an absolutely fantastic project to start off with!

Hi everyone, Nikki here from Addicted to Art. It is a pleasure to be a guest designer at That’s Crafty! this month. For my first project I decided to use some of the fabulous That’s Crafty! surfaces to make an altered panel.

What I did

I took 4 white/greyboard ATC’s and my craft knife and chipped off the edges and added some scratches.

Next I gave them a good coat of black gesso – adding it quite thick and stippling to create extra texture. I also added black gesso to the outside of a 6x6 inch MDF panel and 2 of the MDF hearts from the mixed pack.

Once completely dry I took white gesso and dry brushed over the surface of the ATC’s – highlighting the texture. When dry I added watery washes of 2 translucent paints – Deco Art Prussian Blue and PaperArtsy Claret. Hopefully you can see the effect of adding the colour on the right hand ATC below! I intentionally left the white showing around the edges.

My larger heart was also dry brushed with white gesso and mostly claret paint added. I added a little black gesso around the edges. For the smaller heart I stamped one of Andy Skinner’s texture stamps in a little white gesso and added some white highlights around the edges before applying a thick layer of Glossy Accents and setting aside to dry.

I glued my ATC’s onto the MDF board and then used a stencil brush to carefully add white gesso through the selected areas before gluing the hearts in place too.

Thanks for stopping by – I will be back with another project next Thursday.

Nikki