Skull Beads & Other Textures

Still playing around with texture, but this time it's nothing new,

 just a mix of things I've already tried.

The base is a large countertop sample 5x3.5 inches. I used a combination of thinner texture paste I made with black acrylic, glue and spackle and a thicker version of white latex and spackle.  

On top of a thin layer of texture paste I laid some practice tatting pieces. 

I said I was going to find other uses for those skull pony beads and I have. Honestly I wish I would have added a few more to this piece. I split them in half and pressed them into a layer of texture paste.  

The pony beads are really easy to split.  I set them on a hard surface and force the tip of my pliers down through the hole. I know that's tantamount to tool abuse, but I used a very old pair of needle nose that have teeth so they're not good for delicate work anyway. The pieces will go flying so I should caution you to wear safety glasses.  I kept my free hand cupped over the beads, but even still sometimes those suckers got away.  

I added some tea leaves mixed with paint to a few areas, I just love that texture.  Then I added a few faux pearls, flowers and painted it. 

This a small piece 2.5 x 1.75 inches.  Here are more skull beads, the corners are molded pieces and then center is finishing nails caged by small sections of staples.  Everything was squished into a layer of thick texture paste.