Grungy technique

I have been doing a grungy style on my ICAD cards this week. This is how I do it.

  I used a palette knife to spread crackle paste over one half of my card. I didn't smooth it out and I left it over night to dry. The next day I was disappointed to see it hadn't cracked. I read the instructions on the side of the jar and saw that it is supposed to be used on a hard surface that has been primed. Oh well...at least it is still textured. You could use other mediums for texture like molding paste or thick gesso

For this card I first glued the book paper down and then put the crackle paste around the whole edge of the card, only keeping the rainbow definition uncovered.





 



 I gave the whole card one coat of acrylic paint. It helps to stop the next stage soaking into the paper as much.






I used a paint brush with a little water added to put sepia ink across the card.  I added extra ink around the edge of the card and a little more in the middle. I then used a paper towel to wipe of the excess ink. I didn't realize the ink I was using was permanent and not water based. I really should read the instructions first, lol. It looks patchy because the acrylic paint was patchy. I think it adds to the grungy effect.

This is how it looked after I wiped it.

I added some extra ink over the bottom of the card.

I painted some of the ink on an old container and stamped it on to the card. I put more ink on and stamped again overlapping the first circle. I lightly sprayed it with water in a couple of spots to make the color run a bit. You could put more water on and tilt the card to make drips if you wanted to.

 




















 Using permanent ink I stamped some swirls on. I didn't want to get a properly stamped image so I only pressed lightly in some areas. The bottom right has two images stamped on top of each other.








 I used a paint brush to paint simple flowers with the same acrylic paint that I used before. Each petal is just one stroke of the round paint brush.









 They are not perfect but that doesn't matter for the grungy look. I only did one coat of paint but if you want a more solid looking petal you can do two coats of paint.



 

 This card has two coats of paint on the flowers. You can also see the stamping in the lower left corner. I used an architectural stamp on this one, like an old fence.

 I also used the paint for the stems. I used the paint brush to apply some of the ink for the flower centers allowing it to bleed a little into the wet paint of the petals. I then let it dry completely.

 I used a pen to roughly outline the flowers. I just went around the petals 2 or 3 times. I outlined the stems as well.












 Time to add the grungy bit.  Using bubble wrap I stamped it into the ink and then stamped it onto the card. It doesn't need to be a thick amount of color on the bubble wrap to work.







 You can see some of the circles from the bubble wrap on the card. Vary the pressure, only stamp lightly in some areas. I only did the top left corner and the bottom right.

  I then picked up white acrylic paint on the bubble wrap. I used the same bit without cleaning off the ink because it doesn't matter if some of it gets mixed into the white. That is part of the grungy look. You can see the thicker paint I used is much more solid on the bubble wrap so I only need to barely touch the card for the paint to come off. I don't want too much white now but if I did I could just wipe it off.





 You can see I only added a small amount of white paint. At this stage the flowers were looking too clean so I decided to add one final step.















 Using this mica spray by Lindy's Stamp Gang (link is on the side bar) I sprayed the card and left it to dry.

The finished card.

I forgot to mention you can easily substitute watered down acrylic paint for the ink. I was only using the ink because I picked it up on special last week.  Experiment with what you have. That is the best part of ART.