Painted backgrounds - 'Splattering' by Nicky Amber

Painted backgrounds are an easy and inexpensive way to jazz up your layouts.  With just a piece of plain cardstock and some paint you can create your very own works of art! - and with the fantastic prices on cardstock and fabulous range of paint available it's a really affordable way to customise your layouts.

Today I am going to show you one way to create your own painted background. I stress this is just one way because there are so many different techniques out there to be tried - I really encourage you to experiment and try out different styles and techniques...after all if it doesn't work out you can always just stick a photo over it.

In the layout 'Learning to swim' I have created the painted background by using a splattering technique.  Because it is a page about swimming I wanted to create an effect like splashing water so I used this splattering technique to achieve that.


Take note: you may want to lay down some newspaper over you work surface as there may be paint flying around (or there is when I do it anyway).

I firstly watered down some paint to give it a runny consistency.  

Next I have used a couple of techniques to get the paint from the brush to the page. 

• If you are after big 'blobs' or droplets of paint on your page then you can squeeze the paint from the paintbrush with your fingers.  Dropping these from varying heights will give slightly different effects also.

• If you want more of a fine misty spatter, run your finger across the top of the brush and it will flick the paint from the paintbrush (I remember doing this with an old toothbrush at school).

Here's the result:

 Here's another example:

 

This technique is great for those layouts that feature kids artwork, water play, bathtime or just to try something new.  If you do try out this technique on your layout we would really love for you to share it with us in our Scrap N Craft with T gallery  - click HERE.

Happy creating...xxxooo