Anything but Cute- Grungy Love

February challenge over at anything but cute is grungy love.  So i was at the dollar store (nothing is a dollar at the dollar store FYI) and they had foam heart for Valentine's day and an idea took route.

Lots going on here products used were, chipboard, deco art antiquing creams, foam heart, twine, gesso, lindy's color spray, stampendous embossing enamel, Dina Wakley heavy body acrylic paint, Tim holtz rub ons and brads, earth elements, ranger perfect pearls and Colour Arte primary elements.

SO many layers to get it where i liked it.

I started with the foam heart, cut it flat on the back so it would sit nicer, then cut out a section on the top about half the heart.

I added brads along left side that hasn't been cut out.  Next layered gears along cut out portion, wings on the back and a winders along the bottom.  Use good glue all the paint layers put it through hell.

Started with a base coat of distress paint, iced spruce.  I always have a old yucky paint brush for getting into nooks and crannies, then it doesn't matter if it gets wreck more.  Next layer is deco art antiquing cream- carbon black.  Allow to dry a bit then wipe some off, head to their website to view the tutorial Deco Art. Next layer antiquing cream English red oxide, then titanium white, then i dusted with perfect pearls biscotti.  At this point i set aside for a bit.

I started with a tag i covered with encyclopedia paper, flourish 3- large added some twine and texture with modelling paste and stencil.  On top of the flourish i added earth elements in center.  Once everything had dried painted with gesso.  Originally i was going to have print visible but nope that plan didn't pan out.

I mixed primary mica powder opal green with water and painted the entire flourish. To achieve the ombre effect, mix primary elements mint with water and polymer and paint in center blending out to the edges.  Spraying with water will help blending effect.  I tried painted the twine with brown but nope- ended up painting the entire tag black expect for the flourish.

Next paint layer just on tag  deco art layering antiquing cream, started with patina green, then english red oxide then titanium white.  Then i stared for a long time something wasn't quite right.

The flourish was colored with antiquing cream, carbon black, english red oxide and white. (just in the center on top of all that lovely texture)  Layer and wipe layer and wipe until i had the coloring i wanted.

Here i just started layering more and more paint.  I sprayed the tag with Lindy's moon shadow mist treasure island aqua, i wanted some shimmer but then it was too much shimmer so dry brushed with carbon black antiquing cream but just around the flourish.  I added more english red oxide to the heart.

At this point i decided everything was too much the same and nothing stood out. but what to do.  This is why this tag took me like 6 hours isn't that riduclous.

I added some embossing enamel along flourish, bright color to gears and highlighted the heart with white.

Added some rub ons along top and bottom edges.  I really like how the colored gears turned out, they pop more.

The addition of black around flourish really made it pop more, then the highlights with white and color gears on the heart make the heart the focal point.

So moral of the story- sometimes adding more and more layers works, but remember sometimes it doesn't  you don't really know whats going to happen til the end.

Happy Sunday, enjoy it, got to go to work tomorrow.  My job keeps intervening with my crafting time.