Altered Trading Coins!

Have you heard about a fun new twist on Altered Trading Cards???  Turn them into a 2.5" circle and you have an Altered Trading Coin!!

Recently a friend posted a video she found on YouTube by Craftyhodges sharing her new Altered Trading Coin creations and it's pretty cool! It looked like so much fun I decided to give it a go.

Now I have to admit I keep all sorts of scraps, mistakes, experiments and other bits of paper because they might come in handy someday.  I am so glad I did because I've started putting them to use by making these coins.

These are cut from the DecoArt Acrylic Pouring Medium experiments that I either poured, swiped or dripped onto 110lb cardstock.

These are failed experiments or cards I wasn't satisfied with.

And these are just "clean up" tags or cardstock pieces that I either stamp off my stamps, pick up medium off of my craft mat, or use up extra medium from stencils and other projects. 

They were all cut into 2.5" circles and this is what I made....

My friends....

(Stamps - Lost Coast Designs)

He's a brave soul...the background is an experiment for a faux leather that I layered on a few different stamps, added the steampunk guy and stamped word.

(Stamps - Lost Coast Designs)

This background is a piece of cardstock that I poured using DecoArt Pouring Medium & Acrylic Paints. I added some sparkles with a bit of glitter.  Mona is stamped directly on the coin using VersaFine Clair ink.

(Stamps - Lost Coast Designs)

This background was pounced into a puddle of "run off" from an acrylic pouring session recently. The steampunk biker was stamped directly onto the panel then colored using a bit of alcohol markers and white gel pen.

Aren't these guys darling?  I won them from the Crafty Nomad's recently week long blog celebration. They are from Crafty Individuals and they are just so sweet. I love them and couldn't wait to use them.

(Stamps - Bunny - Crafty Individual; 

"Dream" - Lost Coast Designs)

The Dream ATC was made on a piece of cardstock that I used DecoArt Acrylic Pouring Medium and Paint which was swiped onto cardstock using a baby wipe. The bunny was stamped using VersaFine Clair then water colored using new paints from Kuretake.  Of course I added a bit of sparkle on his little crown. 

(Stamps - Background - Joy Clair; Bunny - Crafty Individuals

"Wisdom" - Lost Coast Designs)

And finally this background was a piece of cardstock I used to stamp off extra ink from a recent project. That's why there are several different images and lots of colors. It was just a mish-mash but it looks pretty good I think.  The bunny was water colored using the new Kuretake paints.

So, what do you think?  

Pretty cool huh? 

I'm thinkin' these little gems are a swap waiting to happen - LOL!!

DecoArt Pouring Medium - Glass & Paper

Hello Everyone!  I am excited to bring you another installment of Acrylic Pouring using DecoArt's new Pouring Medium & Topcoat!

O.k..before we begin, I have a confession to make...I see art everywhere!  Dh and I were shopping a couple weeks ago at Meijers and we were adding a few cans of Bushs baked beans to the cart.  I happened to see this really cool looking brown "bean pot" type jar of baked beans.  I asked him if he wanted to give them a try all the while knowing I was truly only buying it because I KNEW that jar would be perfect (and so cute) to hold paint brushes - LOL!!  Well we had them this weekend so I washed it up ready to be painted ;)  Terrible I know - it's as bad as buying the altoids just for the tins - LOL!!

Anyway, on with the show...

O.k...so I started off by choosing my colors. Since my main objective was to paint the brown bean pot jar I wanted to use pinks and reds since they go so well with the brown.  In addition to the DecoArt Pouring Medium I used Americana True Red, Bubblegum Pink, Titanium White and Tutti Fruitti Crafters Acrylic (which is a few shades darker than the Bubblegum Pink).

And of course here is my objective...the fun and funky brown bean pot!  I was a bit worried because there are some words around the upper edge as well as a texture along the sides of the jar.  Not sure how it would turn out but as it happens it finished off pretty cool.

At the last moment I decided I need to add a bit of lavender so I used DecoArts Grape Taffy Crafter's Acrylic.  Mixed mostly with the 1:1 ratio - some had a bit more pouring medium by accident.

Layered my colors in the cup...

And started pouring!

I just poured it on until I liked what I saw.  You can see the pool of excess paint around the bottom of the jar...no fears - more on that coming further down.  So anyway, I let the paint drip off the jar and air dry.  Once it had dried I poured the DecoArt Topcoat on and let that dry as well.  Here is how it turned out.....

I am SOOO excited about how it turned out....

far better than I imagined! 

I just love how the colors flowed and blended, it is just so pretty!

Here is a close up of the paint over the texture in the glass... I think it adds an interesting dimension to it that an ordinary jar wouldn't have.  If you can see in some areas the paint was redirected by the little nubs of texture.  Pretty cool huh?   Now the only problem is...dh wasn't all that thrilled with the beans but I would really like several more of these jars to paint - LOL!!

I still had some paint in the cup so I poured over a canvas that didn't work last time.I REALLY like how it turned out....

A close up of the cells.

Not sure what I'll do with it but it is pretty.

After my original post about the DecoArt Pouring Medium several people asked about pouring onto cardstock/paper.  Well I did just that and this is how it turned out.  This is the paint that I scraped out of the mixing cups and pouring cup. I poured it all into puddles then just started tilting this way and that.  The paper did curl a bit while the paint was wet but after it dried it went back to a fairly flat state...nothing that can't be fixed when it is glued down to a project.  

It is just so pretty....and you could use it in scrapbooks, on cards, mixed media projects, collages, journals, etc. I think I'll try making some skins next!

Finally there were also LOTS of questions about waste and left over paints.  As you can see from this photo there was quite a bit of paint that had dripped off the sides of the bean pot...no fear, not going to let it go to waste!

I took 2 pieces of foam core board and pounced them into the paint....the first one has lots of bold color puddles that were made from a couple of spills in the box ;)  I never said I wasn't messy - LOL!!  This is an approx 8.5 x 11 sheet...

The second is more blended (except for that splotch of red) but it's still very pretty.  It ended up making more cells than the first pounce did.  This piece is approx half the size of the previous piece.

Just a few more close ups of the smaller piece...

I just love all of the designs in the paint.

And finally the last piece I dipped into the excess was just plain old white cardstock.  It turned out very pretty as well.  

Supplies:

DecoArt -

Pouring Medium

Top Coat

Americana - True Red, Bubblegum Pink, Titanium White

Crafter's Acrylic - Tutti Fruitti, Grape Taffy

Other -

Glass Jar

Canvas Corps - 4x4 Canvas

Foam Core Board

White Cardstock

DecoArt Paint Pouring on Cardstock

Welcome back my inky friends!!  If you recall on Monday I shared my experiments with DecoArts new Pouring Medium on a variety of canvases.  You know I can't stand to waste anything especially paint and ink so rather than toss the baby wipe (from the swipe canvas) and extra paint leftover I pulled the painty wipe across a piece of white cardstock just to see what would happen.  I am happy to say it worked perfectly!!  It makes an incredible surface to work with...check it out ~

These are the first two cards I've made using part of the painted cardstock. I absolutely LOVE how they turned out!! Due to the paint/pouring medium properties you need to use an ink that dries on slick surfaces such as StazOn or VersaFine Clair which is what I used for these examples. I stamped several different images on each card incorporating complimentary colors to the original swipe. Then mounted on card blanks and added a sentiment to each. 

This is the original swipe piece of cardstock...

and my cards...

If you look closely you can pick out where each panel came from on the original.  

For some reason these panels just reminded me of hay fields so I went with wildflower silhouettes for both. I added some interesting textures and other stamps in the background just to take your eyes on a tour of the whole panel.  

What do you think?  Next time I pull out the paints I am going to try to pour right onto my cardstock.  I know it will cause a bit of wrinkling due to the moisture content in the paint/pouring medium but I think I can get it to lay flat after it's dry to use.  These panels were fairly flat after it had dried completely so I'm not worried about that aspect at all.

Supplies:
DecoArt-
Pouring Medium
Pouring Top Coat
Media Fluid Acrylics - Primary Yellow, Primary Cyan, Yellow Green Light, Cobalt Teal Hue
Americana Acrylic Paint - Titanium White

Other - 

White Cardstock

Just For Fun Rubber Stamps - All Stamp Images

DecoArt Pouring Medium

Hello Friends! 

I'm sure most of you have heard the chatter or seeing examples of one of the latest artsy trends...Paint Pouring. I have been resisting the urge to joining the fray but I could resist no longer. DecoArt has come out with Pouring Medium and Top Coat to make the process so easy.

These are my very first examples of my first attempts at this art form and I have to say that I am so pleased with the results and I couldn't have had more fun with the whole process.  But, I'll let you be the judge of my results...  Oh and I didn't add anything to mix...I simply used the DecoArt Pouring Medium and Acrylics.

I started off by gathering all of my supplies....a low profile cardboard "pizza box" to work in; cups to mix paints in and a larger pouring cup; wood stir sticks; DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics, DecoArt Americana Titanium White Acrylic Paint; and of course the new DecoArt Pouring and Top Coat Mediums.

I wanted to try a variety of substrates so I used 2 different size stretched canvases from Canvas Corp., a flat canvas panel from Dick Blick and a 1.5" deep chipboard box that was in my stash. To help hold each piece off of the bottom of the box (so the paint didn't pool on the bottom of the canvas) I used push pins on the dimensional canvases and placed the panel on small cups.

Before I began I put the Pouring Medium into a squeeze bottle so I could better control the amount I used in each color.

I followed the recommended mixing formulas for each type of paint, in these examples - Fluid Acrylic 2:1 paint:medium; Craft Acrylic 1:1 paint:medium.  Since I had these handy little medicine cups I went with 5mL = 1 so the Fluid Acrylics I used 10mL of paint to 5mL of Pouring Medium and 5mL of Americana Acrylic paint to 5mL of Pouring Medium.

After I had everything measured out I stirred and blended the paint/medium thoroughly.  I've heard some people say that this step takes a long time. Personally I didn't think it took long at all - about 2 minutes or so. I did have my colors picked out ahead of time so maybe that's what takes them so long.

The first technique I wanted to try was a Cup, Flip or Dirty Pour (seems everyone has a different term they prefer) basically you layer all of your colors into a single cup then flip it over onto your canvas and let the paints/medium do it's thing.

So I layered in my paints...

then flipped the cup upside down onto the canvas panel.  I let the cup sit in this position for a couple minutes to let the paint migrate to the bottom.

And then...the magical moment - I lifted the cup and let it flow.  I tilted the canvas this way and that to help move the paint towards the edges.  I must point out that I used far less paint than most folks do. Why? Well, if you've visited here before you know I'm pretty frugal and don't let anything go to waste (more on this further along in the post).  

Up until last night I was under the assumption you HAD to use huge quantities of paint to make this type of art form. WRONG....I watched a few videos on it on YouTube and it wasn't until I happened upon a video from Myriam's Nature.  She actually did the math and measured out the paint she needed for the size of canvas she was working on.  Cool!!  I didn't do the math but I did a rough estimate and came pretty close so I had very little waste.

And here's how it turned out...at this point it's still drying but the pattern has pretty much set. The photo at the beginning of this post shows each of the finished canvases with the DecoArt Topcoat applied.

This example was made by pouring the paint from each mixing cup directly onto the canvas in side by side lines. I then tilted the canvas here and there until I liked what I saw.  

The third try was a bit of both of the first 2 techniques, initially I poured a bit of paint onto the canvas; moved it about then poured the light blue and yellow over the top of the already poured paint. The initial pour was starting to dry a bit so I picked up the canvas from one corner and banged it onto the work surface to create these cool breaks.  I LOVE the look...don't know if I'll be able to reproduce it or not but it will be fun to try!

Now you might wonder why you didn't see this in the first photo of this post...well, you have to have a bit of patients for this art - I got a bit anxious and touched this canvas right in the center before it was all the way dry....needless to say I messed it up good.  Soooo, you will need to leave your painted canvases to dry for a good while before you check them ;) 

My final example was made using the swipe technique. I scraped the paint out of each mixing cup and the pour cup onto the left hand side of this canvas. I then used a baby wipe to drag the paint across the canvas from left to right. After I had dragged the paint I let it dry at a 45 degree angle.  As you can see it created a really cool pattern as the paint slid downhill.  It is still wet here which is why the photo is sideways...I didn't want to attempt to move it after the fiasco with the other canvas.

Finally, remember I said I hated to waste paint...well I moved each canvas from the box I poured in and picked up the "run off" paint with the baby wipe from the swipe technique and swiped it across a piece of cardstock!!  It turned out amazing, I can't wait to use it on some cards.

All in all this was SOOOO much fun! I loved it.  I will be doing many more "pours" and can't wait to share them with you.

So, what do you think???

Supplies:
DecoArt-
Pouring Medium
Pouring Top Coat
Media Fluid Acrylics - Primary Yellow, Primary Cyan, Yellow Green Light, Cobalt Teal Hue
Americana Acrylic Paint - Titanium White
Canvas Corp - 4x4x2"; 5x5x1 canvas
Dick Blick - 8x10 canvas covered panel
Unknown - 5x7x1.5 Chipboard Box
Push Pins, Measuring Cups, Pour Cup, Wood Stir Sticks, Pizza Box (to work in)