Grungy Love

Hello Everyone, this is one of two posts today...

The lovely Sara Emily is our host at Anything But Cute where we are celebrating Valentine's Day with a 'Grungy Love' theme.

In Sara's own words - "To celebrate St. Valentine's Day, we would like to see you make a Grungy Valentine's project for your sweetheart!  It can be a card, tag, or anything else you might give a loved one to show them how much you care.  Just make sure it's grungy!" 

For my Sweetheart's Valentine creation I used a 6 inch square wood base (purchased from Indigo Blu), lots of paint in some of  his favourite colours, some random stamping, a grungy crackled heart and some 'industrial' embellishing.

I gathered together some of the items I wanted to use.  DecoArt Media Gesso in white, Indigo Blu Gesso (Gee-so-good) in black and my favourite background stamps, Rugged Edge by Limor Webber for Indigo Blu.

I painted the wood board with a good layer of the white gesso and once dry I added a few pieces of Tim Holtz tissue tape.

I then added some colour, not too heavy, I just lightly loaded my brush, first with Tim Holtz Distress Paint in Scattered Straw and then some Indigo Blu English Cottage acrylic paint in 'Grandma's Teacup' - this paint goes a long, long way and you only need a tiny amount.

It was a bit too blue for my liking so I added some more of the white gesso to knock back the colour a little bit.  Next, I took a couple of the stamps and stamped randomly using the Indigo Blu black gesso.  I still wasn't entirely happy so I got out my Andy Skinner Industrial set of stamps and I stamped randomly over the entire board, using Wendy Vecchi's Archival Ink in Watering Can.  I love the way the gesso stamping comes to the fore and is slightly dimensional - and the Archival Ink stamping goes to the back.  I am happy with my background now.

Next up is the heart embellishment.  I cut a heart freehand and coated it with the Indigo Blu gesso in black.  Once dry I added a coat of my favourite crackle medium - Weathered Wood by DecoArt.

Once the heart was dry I painted the heart with DecoArt Qunacridone Magenta Media Fluid Acrylic, with just a tiny drop of Paynes Grey added in to give the heart a slightly more grungy look.

As with all crackle techniques it is best to 'seal' the crackle and I used the DecoArt Ultra-Matt Varnish, it really does give a beautiful matt finish.

To grunge the heart a little more I twisted some black wire and added two lengths to my heart.

I thought the base looked a little bare so I added some cogs to two of the corners.  The cogs were cut from some thick card using my new Memory Box Cog die.  

To make the heart 'pop' a bit more I went all around the outside edge of the heart with a charcoal pencil and then smudged it with my finger.  In real life it makes the heart look really dimensional.

To finish off I added some chit chat words by Tim Holtz.

I hope you like my grungy, masculine Valentine Project and I hope you will join us at Anything But Cute this month in our 'Grungy Love' mixed media challenge.

As I have used Indigo Blu stamps and paints I would like to enter this into Indigo Blu's latest challenge - where the theme is Anything Goes.

I would also like to enter into Countryview Crafts challenge where the theme is Make your

Own Background.

As always, thanks so much for looking, I have another project up already today - sorry for bombarding you but it is just the way it is sometimes!

Hugs, Anne xx