Birds together

I’ve decided that art cards are the perfect size for testing out ideas and techniques — small ones anyway… This was inspired by seeing a large abstract artwork with a big drippy glittery motif across the centre of it; that got me thinking of ways to make glitter drips without ending up with glitter everywhere.

If I’m going to test an idea, then I’m going to do it in such a way that I can turn it into a finished piece if the idea works. So I started by smooshing Distress oxides over an art card to give me a background to work with.

I wanted to try mixing fine glitter into a gel medium, but even the soft gel I have is too firm to drip. A fluid gel medium would probably be perfect if I had any… what I did have was some flow improver — it’s designed to thin acrylic paint so it should work on an acrylic medium.

I mixed the medium, flow improver and glitter together in proportions that resulted in (a) a drippy consistency and (b) far too much for a single art card.

I laid a line of drippy glitter across the centre of the card and added drops along it to create the drips. Then I put it to one side to dry and experimented on an alcohol ink background with the remaining glitter mix. (A successful experiment that I’ll share when I’ve done something with it.)

It dried! No big surprise really, I wouldn’t be sharing the card if it hadn’t.

I had thought about painting the birds black but then decided to go with the dark purple instead as it goes nicely with the blues on the background.

The centre glitter line was a bit big and unsubtle so I glued a strip of gauze along it and added the birds on top.

I chose a small word sticker, added it to the card and outlined it with a charcoal pencil.

To differentiate between above and below the birds, I dry-brushed a very small amount of white gesso on the top and black gesso on the bottom.

I could have left it like that. But my liquid chrome pen was to hand, so I covered the background with dots of varying sizes.

Supplies:

• Prep & Stick:
  Finnabair – soft matte gel
  flow improver
• Colour:
  Distress oxides – frayed burlap, faded jeans, peacock feathers
  Finnabair metallique paint – dark velvet
  Ranger gesso – black
  Liquitex gesso – white
  charcoal pencil
  Molotow liquid chrome pen 1mm
• Paper & Fabric:
  Ranger – specialty stamping artist trading card
  strip of gauze
• Embellishments:
  SnipArt – birds on a wire
  Craft Box – glitter (from a subscription box)
  Tim Holtz idea-ology – chitchat stickers