Video Tutorial: Grungy Gears Background Technique

This month's Pop it Ups Designer Challenge has two parts. Here are the instructions I provided the team and our guest designer:

FEBRUARY - Artsy or Cutesy - Which way will you go? Feel free to do both. Cards should lean very artsy fartsy, with inks and textures and quotes about the soul (or whatever) OR very cutesy, like puppies and kittens and rainbows and sprinkles. Post your creations Monday & Tuesday, February 9th and 10th. My post will be on Wednesday, February 11th.

Many of the team is tackling both halves of the challenge and I decided to do the same, focusing on the Cutesy side of the challenge for the video tutorial (The cutesy video tutorial will be posted next week on the 11th) and making the Arsty side of the challenge just for fun, since when I work in this genre I tend to experiment with mixed media until I like something - much harder for me to reproduce what I did and teach it on video.

And so I came up with an artistic bathtub card! (I know, crazy, right?)

The front of the card features the grungy gears (and clock) background technique and then I ripped a tear into the background to allow butterflies to "escape". 

The card's interior features the Bathtub die, cut from another grungy gears background, attached to the Lorna Label, and more escaping butterflies, this time from a key hole cut into the tub.

When I posted this card to the team's private group I got some questions about how I did the background technique and I figured that at least that part of things was easy to reproduce, so here's a video tutorial for how I did the background for the card's front and for the bathtub's texture:

 

What I like about this particular background technique is that it doesn't require much else. For my card front I added just a few elements - more gears die cut from black cardstock and layered together to create chipboard-like elements. I dotted the tops with a silver leafing pen and then embossed with black powder to mostly cover the silver. The metal clock that is layered over the "lump" clock is from my stash, as is the metal flower brad. The clock hands come with the clock die. To make the numbers more visible I used my fingernail to scrape away the black paint on the numbers, revealing the silver shelf liner.

The small butterfly die comes included with the Butterfly Pivot Card set. I found some teal glittered paper in my scrap drawer, added ECD Double Sided Adhesive to the back of the paper and then die cut a ton of butterflies from it. For each butterfly I added a small section of black/silver Glitter LInes to be the body and head, and then bent the wings up and stuck only one side down on the card. For the ones that are suspended on the pop-up I used two butterflies back-to-back so there would not be any stray adhesive. The metal key and keyhole, plus the chain were all from my stash. As it turned out, the keyhole die from the Heart Pivot Card was nearly an exact match for the keyhole in the metal plate, making it very easy for me to add a hole in the tub to correspond with the metal plate.

 

 

Surprisingly enough I did not have an idea for the greeting when I started this card. I was going to have it say "Hello Art" or "Escape the rules" or "Let your creativity fly free!" - but then I remembered this old quote stamp I had and it could not have been a more perfect greeting. I stamped it on cardstock and used the stitched ovals die from the Oval Accordion to die cut it into a bath mat.

 

 

I did use a lot of stash items on this card, but I've sourced what I could with the links below. I didn't see the Duck Easy Liner brand of shelf liner on Amazon but I found a Con-Tact brand version. I believe I bought my roll of Duck Easy Liner at Walmart many years ago, but I'm not sure if it is still available in stores. A quick Google search will turn up lots of choices for shelf liners in fun colors, patterns and finishes, so this could be a great technique for further experimentation on your part.

 

If you do end up experimenting send me an e-mail or a link on Facebook so I can see your awesome interpretations!

 

Join me and the team next week for the official start of the February Artsy And/Or Cutesy Pop it Ups Designer Challenge!

 

 

Clock and Gears (917) Lorna Label PopUp (915) Bathtub Pop Stand (980) Pop it Ups Butterfly Pivot Card 767 Pop it Ups Oval Accordion 772 Pop it Ups Heart Pivot Card 775 Elizabeth Craft Designs Glitter Border Peel Offs Elizabeth Craft Designs Transparent Double Sided Tape - 152mm (509) Heidi Swapp Silicone Craft Mat Speedball Deluxe 4-Inch Soft Rubber Brayer Ranger 15-Inch-by-18-Inch Inkssentials Craft Sheet Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Paint, 1-Ounce, Black Soot Fiskars Dual-tip Embossing Stylus (56067097J) Con-Tact Brand Metal FX Self-Adhesive Shelf and Drawer Liner

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