**This post is part of the Crackle Medium promotion fortnight. Remember to leave a comment to be entered in
the giveaway.**
Hello all, happy Tuesday. Let's start with a basic explanation of crackle mediums..........
Crackle mediums are used to achieve a peeled paint/aged patina effect on virtually any surface, including paper, wood, MDF, acetate, glass & of course, paper & card.
There are lots of different crackle mediums available & in my experience, the clear gel types - of which
Imagination Crafts Crackle Medium is one - are among the easiest & most effective to use.
You can apply CM over acrylic paint & onto patterned/coloured card. Use a fairly heavyweight card/paper, ideally about 300gsm.
Two things to remember: you will never get the same result twice & the amount of cracks you get will depend on the amount of medium you use.
Brush the CM either down or across your substrate, keeping the brushstrokes going in one direction only. Try to vary the amount of medium you use, that way you'll get a more varied & interesting appearance.
CM can be dried with a heat tool, but if you've used quite a lot it will take a while to dry. I usually set mine aside to dry naturally while I work on something else. And it dries completely clear, so you can't see it in the photo below.
Once the medium is completely dry it's time to add acrylic paint. Use a wide paintbrush & quite a lot of paint - I can't give you a quantity, it's trial & error & practice, practice, practice. Brush the paint over the substrate - in one direction only. That bit's important. If you go back over the first brushstrokes you're not going to get a crackle. Again, try to vary the amount of paint - a mix of large & small crackles looks very effective.
On this piece I used too little CM, particularly on the left. But that is not a wasted piece, I simply applied more medium & when it was dry, applied more paint. So if you don't like the result you get, just start again.
Here, I got a much better result, with a mix of large & small cracks & also areas with none. (I had started stamping on this before I remembered to take a photograph).........
I stamped the
Woodware Clear Magic Delicate Daisies stamp onto white card with Onyx Black Versafine & heat embossed with clear EP, cut them out, glued them to the trellis with Cosmic Shimmer glue & added an orange adhesive gem to each one..........
The sentiment from the Delicate Daisies set was stamped with clear embossing ink onto white vellum & the card was finished with a square of orange core'dinations onto a 7x7 white card blank........
The second piece uses the piece I had stamped onto above. I stamped the Delicate Daisies, heating setting with black Versafine, then paper piecing the two flowers.........
I dry embossed a piece of Anna Marie Designs dottie card with the
Embossalicious Lattice 6x6 folder & matted everything onto kraft card, adding some black adhesive gems, black gingham ribbon & a Craftwork Cards sentiment........
That's it for today. Please feel free to ask questions, either in the comments under this post, or on the
Lisa B Designs Facebook page. Lisa or I will get back to you asap. And don't forget to leave those all-important comments for the giveaway.
I'll be back on Sunday with more crackle projects. Until then, happy crafting.
Kirsten
