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Textured Acrylic Paint Backgrounds

By Jeni Calkins
Scrampin' Love Bug
Beginning Scramping Team Designer 

Acrylic paints can give you an amazing amount of texture. The texture comes from the method you use to apply your paint. Try using different tools, both dry and wet, as they will produce very different results. These are a few examples: 

A wet coarse brush will make thick brush marks.
A dry brush will make scratch marks.
A dry sponge brush will leave sweeping marks.
A junk mail credit card will produce a smooth finish.
A sea sponge will produce splotched effects.
Run a comb through thick paint to produce texture.
Apply paint to a wet, crumpled up brown grocery bag.
Apply paint to a torn piece of corrugated cardboard.

Supplies:

•  Foam Stamps (Making Memories)
•  Patterned Paper (Rusty Pickle)
•  Patterned Paper (Design Originals)
•  Vellum Verse (Deja Views)
•  Black Cardstock (Astrobrights)
•  Gesso (Liquitex)
•  Acrylic Paint Key Lime, Aquamarine, Shopping Bag, Poppy  (Making Memories).
•  Regular Gel Medium – Gloss (Goldens)
•  Brad (Making Memories)
•  Torn Scrap from a Corrugated Box
•  Scrap from a Brown Grocery bag.
•  Hermafix Tabs (Herma)
•  Vellum tape (3M)
•  Freezer Paper – To Use as a Pallet
•  Paint Brush, Sponge Brush, Sea sponge Junk Mail Credit Card, Pallet Knife

Instructions: 

1.    Grocery bag paper - Wet paper bag and scrunch into a ball. Open up but leave it wrinkled.  Paint on Key Line and Aquamarine using a sponge brush in random spots. Scrunch up the page bag to blend color and open, allowing it to dry with some wrinkles.  

2.    Corrugated cardboard – Tear off one side of the cardboard to expose the corrugations.  Paint with Shopping Bag, once dry, dry brush Poppy to highlight the corrugations. 

3.    Gesso impression – On a black scrap of cardstock spread a thick layer of gesso using a pallet knife, allow it to dry until tacky, use a pointed tool to right the word play into the paint, let dry.  Dry brush Aquamarine then little Key lime over the word. Let dry and tear to expose the back cardstock. 

4.    Highlighted vellum – Brush back of vellum with Poppy paint, let dry. 

5.    Sponged Background – Use a dry sea sponge to paint Key Lime and Aquamarine paints on a scrap of black cardstock using a dabbing motion. 

6.    Credit Card Background – Run a line of Aquamarine paint along the top of a black scrap of cardstock. Use the edge of the credit card to spread the color across the area, add more paint as need for complete coverage. Let dry.  Optional – take Key Lime paint and push it across the paper in a few areas so the first color shows through. 

7.    Dry brush – On a black piece of cardstock dry brush a small amount of Key Lime paint the paint to get a scratched effect. 

8.    Stamping  - Using a foam brush, paint a thin coat of paint across the top of the stamp. Stamp onto credit card background, clean stamp immediately. 

9.    Decoupage – Cut out letters from printed-paper, glue with Regular Gel Medium, let dry.  Cover with another coat of medium.  

10.                       Print or crop photo and mount on black cardstock. Arrange photos and painted cardstock as shown in photo. Attach with the Hermafix, Vellum tape or brads.

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