So today's project features a distressing technique called Crackle which we have been teaching in our lessons this week. We called it "Slap, Crackle & Pop" as the technique involves you slapping on some paint, watching it crackle and then seeing your elements pop off of your project. There is a quick way of doing this which is to use Tim's Crackle paint..As with most things, there is more than one way to do it! So here is how we did it with products that most of us should have in our crafting stash...
First of all I cut out some card shapes from the Indie Art cartridge using my Cricut Machine. These images were cut out at 2" Real Dial Size...
I covered one of the images
with some Gold Acrylic Paint.
Once the paint is dry, add a generous amount of PVA clear drying glue
and spread a thickish layer all over the image.
Whilst the glue is still wet paint on your top coat of colour trying not to blend the paint and the glue to much.
Then heat with your heat gun. This process is to dry the Acrylic paint quickly but you could quite easily just leave the paint to air dry and it will still crackle.
The reason that you get a crackle effect is that the Acrylic paint dries quicker than the glue. As the paint dries the glue is still wet underneath and sort of stretches and splits the paint, forming a crackle effect. As the glue dries clear the initial undercoat of colour is revealed....
I love the effect that the crackle gives but was not over the moon about the paint as it dries to a matt finish. Most Acrylics have an oil or wax in then so once dry you can always give them a buff with a kitchen towel to give them a shine. I did this but also added a bit of sparkle by way of some Iridescent Sparkle Spray. This gave the image a varnished and sparkly look.
Repeat this process on the Club, Spade & Diamond using the correct coloures accordingly.
I then took a 5"x5" piece of White card stock and a 5 1/4" x 5 1/4" piece of Gold card stock.
I repeated the paint, heat, Glue, Paint, heat process on the White piece of card but this time using some Moss Green Acrylic Paint. I hope you get the idea that this is a distressed Poker table!!? Once dry, the now Green piece of card got a spray of the sparkle and then was layered onto the Gold piece of card.
This was then mounted onto a base card with my card images mounted on top.I punched out some card images from an EK Success border punch and positioned them down the side to complete the project...
So, something a little bit different for you to try and is great fun to do. The results are quite random and you'll get a different effect each time you do it, so why not give it a go?
Thanks for checking us out...
See you soon.
Andy..
Thank you so much for this tutorial. I love the effect of crackle paint, and have been using it on many household items for years hahaha. I never knew about the PVA glue and paint over it though, so thats a very good tip, as not all crackle paint crackles as it should! Not to mention the prize of some of these "proffesional" paints!
ReplyDeleteHi Andy, thanks for another way to 'crackle', I've always used a crackle medium, but will try your technique, next time! Your card, as always, oozes inspo...........luv French Lin...xx..
ReplyDeleteGreat card Andy, especially with Father's day coming up.
ReplyDeleteWhat a clever technique, would never have thought of using glue as the crackle medium.
Toni :o)