Messin' around with a heart!

Hello, dear readers, visitors and followers old and anew,

today I want to share with you 

a new tutorial 

and Try It On Tuesday's challenge theme for this fortnight: 

"Home is where the heart is!".

Well, I know, winged hearts are quite common with the crafting and scrapping world, but they are definitely quite rare for me ;)

And as I am mainly non-cute oriented when it comes to crafting and painting, this heart tutorial is definitely a "messy" one. So everybody who does not want to end up having his hands and fingers covered with lots of paint after some splendid (messy, which almost means the same with me *lol) time at one's working desk might directly want to hop over to Try It On Tuesday and visit my awesome teamies, who have some wonderful inspiration in store for you! 

For all those who want to know more about the How To, here we go!

For my messy heart I used:

- DecoArt Traditions Texture Medium

- DecoArt Texture Crackle "Sage Green"

- DecoArt Traditions Acrylic paints "Quinacridone Burnt Orange", "Carbon black" and "Medium White"

- some wire and pliers

- a punching needle/tool

- a piece of thick corrugated card

- a scrap of heavy black card

- Sizzix Tim Holtz "Layerd Wings" die

- Sizzix or other die cutting machine

- scissors

- some (old) bristle brushes, a palette (I love to use coated paper plates), a palette knife, glue, kitchen role, baby wipes

1. Cut a rough heart shape about the size of 5'' hight from thick corrugated card. (Try to be not too exact with cutting the shape, the less exactly the better).

2. Apply a surface sealer or simply a layer of acrylic colour to seal the card's surface. Otherwise the crackle won't work. Let dry (you may use the heat tool, but be careful not to get too close, otherwise you might get some bubbles from overheating...which can also be welcome ;)

3. Apply a generous coat of DecoArt Texture Crackle using the palette knife. If the

layer is too thin you won't get any crackles at all. You can use the heat tool to dry and watch the magic happen.

4.  Create a not too light wash with DecoArt Traditions acrylic colour "Quinacridone Burnt Orange" and apply it generously to your heart's surface. Especially work the colour into the creases using the brush. Then quickly wipe off the excess using a baby wipe (or even a kitchen towel, but I prefer the wipes).

Don't be afraid - your crackle layer won't come off that easily.

Your heart should look like that now:

5. Next use DecoArt Traditions Acrylic colours "Quinacridone Burnt Orange" and  "Carbon black" and a bristle brush to stipple a dark border around the edges to add some contrast and center the focus.

Don't be shy - visible brush strokes and dots are mostly welcome! Remember: this is a messy heart  we are messin' around with ;)

I even use my fingers when it comes to applying or removing some paint here and there or creating some texture. 

If you happen to find that you have applied too much colour, don't panic: take a clean brush with a load of water and water your already applied colour down. Then simply wipe it off the surface using a some kitchen role. This always works - as long as your colours haven't dried yet! 

You can create as many layers of red and black stippling as you like, but let your final colour be "carbon black" to get a dark and well defined border.

6. Next use some black wire and pliers to build a heart shape. Create some whirls with the wire ends.

7. Paint the word "HOME" onto your heart, using a stencil, DecoArt Traditions colour "Carbon black" and a bristle brush with not too much colour, otherwise you smudge your image when removing the stencil.

8. Use some thin soft wire, bending four thin and long "Us", to fix the small wire heart to the crackled heart. Punch holes before inserting both ends of your "Us" from front to back. Close the ends on the back by twisting them with your fingers. Then cut off the excess and use a flat nose plier to flatten the sharp ends. 

  

I used some self adhesive small labels to cover the wire ends before I continued working. 

You can add a second piece of heart shaped card to the back later (after glueing the wings to the heart...see step 14) to cover it up, if you want to. 

9. Die cut a pair of wings from heavy black card. I used the Tim Holtz "Layered Wings".

10. Cover them with DecoArt Traditions Texture Medium using a bristle brush and leaving short visible strokes and whirls while applying.

11. Let dry. The medium dries almost transparently, letting the black card show through, which is important for the desired look. 

12. Using the dry brushing technique with a thin bristle brush and DecoArt Traditions acrylic colour "Medium white", cover the wings carefully. Try to apply colour only to the raised areas of the medium to increase the contrast.

This image shows you the difference between a dry brushed wing (to the left) and one I left with the texture medium only.

13. For a finish with the wings stipple a black border as you already did with the heart shape. I also left one wing without border to show you the difference so you can choose how to use your wings.

14. Glue the dried wings to the back of the heart.

15. Create a wire hanging for your heart and fix it to the corrugated card as you did with the "Us" that hold the wire heart in place. Done!

Thank you for staying with me this far and I hope you have a lot of fun creating your own messed up, crackled hearts ;)

Hugs,
die amelie x


More Mixed Media and Altered Art Tutorials from some very talented fellow crafters and artists can be found over here.