And now - for something different

Today I was fed up with working on 'THE BOOK' and thought I'd try something creative to feed the brain cells something other than history.  If this publishes as it should, the left picture is part one and the right picture is the end result (shown stapled into my art journal....staples aren't part of the technique!).

Anyhow.....

I had fun, so thought I'd share what I did. 

You need:  a piece of card stock (I used white); gesso; a paint brush; a newspaper (I used the ad section); acrylic paint. 

I tore the newspaper into pieces being sure to remove any really black or any overly blank sections.  Then I painted a layer of gesso onto the card stock and placed the newsprint on top(while the gesso is still wet).  You can rub it down with your hands or a brayer.  Leave for 15-20 seconds and remove the newsprint.  If you leave it longer than that, the newspaper will stick and won't come off, which is what happened to me when I tried to cover the entire large piece of card at once.  I finally tried  just coating an area of the card with gesso and then applying a big enough piece of newspaper to cover the wet area and that worked much better.  If you are unhappy with any section, just reapply the gesso and newspaper. 

Allow to dry completely.  The final step was to water down some acrylic paint and 'goop' it on however you'd like.  I used three colours, one of which was a metallic gold.  This would make great backgrounds for atc's, postcards, or greeting cards. 

You can click on either picture to embiggen it!