GPP Street Team: Crusade No.44

i've been a fan of Michelle Ward's artwork for a while now, and probably many of you have heard of her monthly creative challenges over at her GPP Street Team blog. i've been lurking over there for a couple of years now, and even did a few challenges but have never posted my results; today i finally am!

This month's crusade, Crusade No. 44, is called "In a Scrape" and the challenge is to apply paint to the page using only a credit card or similar tool. No brushes allowed. i love applying paint this way and have used this technique many times. i took on the option of adding techniques from Crusade No. 25 - The Properties of Gesso , and here are my results.

i started by scraping gesso onto one page, then after it dried i scraped on acrylic craft paint. i sprayed the page with water and wiped and dabbed with a paper towel.

For the 2nd page in this layout i gessoed a foam stamp and stamped onto the page, then scraped on paint and again sprayed with water and wiped to leave a resist. The wiping left a "glow" around the stamped images that i really like.

Back to page one - more scraping on paint in different colors, then a last scraping of gesso.

Here's a close-up where you can see that i scratched into the gesso with the edge of the credit card.

The second page (close-up) received more scraping with my chosen colors and a layer of scraped gesso as well. The stamped images are now only peeking through these layers.

Here's how page 2 ended up. i attached a mask of letters (by Tim Holtz) and scraped paint over that, then outlined the word with a Sharpie pen.

This was a fun challenge and i'd like to take on more of these and, hopefully, actually post my results more often. These crusades are open to everyone, so stop by her GPP Street team blog and join in!

Thanks for looking, and have an artful day!