Tortured Textures

I'm gearing up for the annual Halloween craft party.  This year the main focus will be the mixed media altered bottles we started to touch on last year.  I say bottles, but really these techniques can be applied to any surface.  

I recently stumbled on Maremi SmallArt.  I've watched a couple of her videos on different methods of creating texture and a couple on creating art with junk you might have laying around.  Her videos are quite long and chatty, but very entertaining and informative.  She's like the Bob Ross of mixed media.  For someone like me who isn't very outwardly expressive it's almost cathartic listening to her. Not to mention all that joy is conveyed with the coolest accent, although being from the Midwest I think pretty much everyone who doesn't sound like me has a cool accent.  The videos I watched were long, but she covers a lot of ground quickly and efficiently.

There's one thing she said about creating art in one of her video's that I absolutely adore, "Be spontaneous. Be fearless." Alright, enough about Marta. But you won't be disappointed if you check out her channel.

One of things I loved about her texture videos (Ok I'm not done talking about her.), is she used the cardboard backing from packaging as her base.  I've been trying out different things on full projects, like twine & seeds, eggshells, plastic bugs, flowers & buttons and molded pieces.  It's been a slow process.  Watching her I realized how wonderful it could be to do smaller projects and try a bunch of textures in a short amount of time.

For my base I used countertop samples from almost two decades ago.  Can we say hoarder? When we were picking out countertops I couldn't decide and I have so many samples but I couldn't just throw them away.  I used some to make a faux floor for a pumpkin years ago but otherwise nothing has come of them.  For this I used the blank side of the samples as my canvas. Everything is painted with a layer of flat black and highlighted in champagne gold. I kept them very simple and only used items I already had.


My first texture comes from embossed tinfoil.  Using texture paste with stencils has been on my list of things to try.  So when I saw this neat stencil on clearance I figured now was the time.  Except it's not a stencil it's an embossing folder.  I didn't know such a thing existed, but now I have one.

The image is raised on one side and depressed on the other, so that when the folder is closed they nest together.  A piece of paper is placed in the folder and normally pressed with a little machine and then you have a nice imprinted design.  If you don't have a little machine you can use a rolling pin and a little muscle.

The thicker the paper the more effort required but tinfoil takes almost no effort at all.  I do recommend tearing the tinfoil into the sizes you want prior to pressing.  The other way around and you will press out the design with your fingers wherever you hold it to tear.

On the left we have a base layer of tea bag with pieces of embossed tinfoil depressed side up.  The right is a layer of tissue paper topped with embossed tinfoil with the raised side up.

And this is what they look like with stuff glued on.  Glass half marbles over pictures from a GrandinRoad magazine*, a bit of cheesecloth, a bottle cap, and a piece of scrap wire randomly twisted and lightly hammered flat.

*I admit I ordered their magazine just for the pictures, but they do have some cool stuff.  They also have some items that look like overpriced cheaply made knock-off's of stuff other crafters have done, but all the big kids are doing that these days. I did end up buying a half dozen skeleton mice from them last year, so I guess it does pay to advertise.  I got a really good deal on them after Halloween.  I bought the mice to use as rats since they are more rat size, whereas I think their rats are miniature Chihuahua sized. 

   

This is me painting already attached cheesecloth black.  I painted it flat on parchment paper, so I wouldn't get paint on the glass and after it was dried I wrapped it around the edges of the glass.  I thought this in-between moment was kind of mini work of art on it's own and worth keeping in mind to recreate something similar in the future.  

I liked the texture of these napkins and wanted see how they held up after painting.  I do like how they turned out, even though I'm a little disappointed that as different as the napkins looked, after painting I can't tell which is which.  

And here are the finished projects:

On the left more scrap wire, dismantled fake flower, bottle cap, plastic skull ring, seed beads and some Halloween clearance black stars.  The other is a plastic scorpion, tiny rhinestones, external tooth lock washers and spent (not live) primers*.

*Unless you or someone near and dear to you reloads their own ammo, you probably wont be familiar with these. This is redneck crafting right here folks.  I do clean them before using them for crafting purposes.

The left is napkin again but this time with an overlay of thread.  I've used string, yarn, jute, but never thread.  It seems so thin and insubstantial I never considered it.  Again the inspiration came from Marta, I was really impressed by her use of thread.  My example is not so impressive.  Yes my thread usage adds texture and interest, but I realized afterwards what I like about her method. First she randomly adds texture paste or thick gesso over the thread. Secondly she uses inks to add color and its that combination of bleeding and wicking that really makes it look phenomenal.  

The right side is paper towel, as opposed to the previous paper napkin.  It is thicker and the texture more defined.  

Here they are finished.  The left is another glass marble, this time over an image from an Oriental Trading Co. magazine.  Buttons, fun fur yarn, and thin macramé cord are also used.  The right is more flower pieces, scrap wire, a bead cap and plastic spider.  The spider was first painted with a mixture of dried tea (from the tea bag used previously) and black paint.


I chose the most boring neutral samples I had, in case this project was a complete bust, so the backs needed a little sprucing up too. 

Both of these were painted black and then the paint was removed with a paper towel before it completely dried.  I like how the same technique had very different results by scrunching the paper towel differently and using different pressure.   

The sample on the left already had an interesting texture, so I just highlighted it with black.  The right-hand one is finger painting.  

Here the left-hand side was painted by dabbing the surface with a cotton ball covered in paint. I thought the cotton would stick and come off in bits, it didn't.  What it did do was create a very fine texture that looks similar to sandpaper in person.  The last one is my favorite. First paint was added and removed like the first two, but then around the edges I brushed on the paint mixed with tea leaves leftover from the spider.

So that's it. I got to play around with a lot of textures in a short amount of time.  Now I have an idea of what to expect applying them to other things and I have these mini samples to use for reference at my craft party.