Tuesday 9 July 2013

Trends on Tuesday - chalk inks and gesso


This months gallery is packed with some gorgeous Fancy Pants papers (this page uses Park Bench which you can find here) and I wanted to talk about a new technique that I discovered with a lovely little tutorial by Miranda Edney here talking about how to use chalk inks in a slightly different way.  

I started with my grey patterned paper and then using a palette knife added a thin layer of white gesso (I had already cut out all the other bits and knew roughly where I wanted them), when the gesso dries using a sponge and chalk inks, or you can use the chalk ink direct to paper, but I found this hard to control start rubbing the ink over the gesso.  It gives a really nice misty coloured effect - I used blue, yellow and grey inks.  Once I had my colours I then lightly stamped over the top using a clear acrylic grid stamp and then layered up all my papers.  It's a really pretty way to add some more colour to your page and less messy than spritzing and a little more controllable as you can build up the colour.