Monday, December 12, 2011

Painting and Flattening Texture Fades

Today I found out the coolest thing! OK....you know how you can paint over the texture fades (or as some know them....embossing plastic folder thingys) to create a grunge or shabby chic look? Well if you don’t know the painting trick you can go watch my you tube on it – it’s a guaranteed way to turn any crazy background you made that you don’t like, into something spectacular! clip_image002
Anyway – there is a certain look you get with that technique; it doesn’t look like stamping. I bring that up because there are texture fades that are exact replicas of stamps (for example Tim Holtz – from back when he was with Stamper’s Anonymous – V4-1096 stamp otherwise known as “Carte Postale,” and the texture fade that is the same image and size from the Sizzix Alterations collection).
clip_image004
Since one habit is to “emboss” with the folder and then run an ink pad over the raised areas to bring out the image – one might argue – if you are going to do that why not just use the stamp of the image to begin with? Well with the paint technique it is an entirely different look – a look you can’t get with a stamp and ink. However, if you want to then use it in a collage – you kind of have to accept and enjoy the fact that it is extremely textured with bits and pieces raised up everywhere.....until now! I figured out today that you can texture fade (dry emboss) and then do whatever you want to it using the raised areas to grab paint a certain way or ink a certain way etc. Then you can run it back through the embossing machine (I have the big shot) with both plates and a paper shim and take away all the embossing – it will be flat again! This is too cool! I have so many backgrounds I have made that I could not use for certain things because they did not lie flat – now they do! The best example of why you would want it to lie flat again is in the case where you want to decoupage (collage) an image to it – you can’t do that when there are raised areas. I’m gonna have to go buy the rest of the texture fades collection – I just saw that there is a new one out by Tim Holtz....