Make it work! Using limitations to your advantage. (Distressed ombre artwork)

I am still trying to put together a recap of the SNAP! Conference, but in the meantime I wanted to share one of the crafts that we were able to make in one of the workshops while we were there.

There is a cute little company called Poppyseed Projects and they put together kits so you can make cute, textured and distressed signs.

photos from Poppyseed Projects

We took the Poppyseed Projects "class" to learn how their texturizing cream worked.  I fully expected that they would have us make a little something like a little picture frame or a small plaque.  Nope!  They gave us a full size 15" x 15" sign.

They had already prepped our signs with the texturizing cream and a coat of both white and black paint.  We added the vinyl over the top that would serve as our stencil.

Some of us had a little trouble adding the vinyl...

Then we were able to choose a paint color and paint it over the top of our signs.

Bev from Flamingo Toes painting her sign.

When it was my turn to choose a paint color, the only colors left were neon.  I lived through the 80's. I have already had enough neon to last me a lifetime, thank you very much.  So what's a gal to do...?  Beg and borrow other people's paint when they're done with it.

 

I begged a bloop of Sage from the cute gal in the hat and mixed it with my Neon Green.  The lady with the Aqua color let me have the rest of her bottle, so I ended up getting kind of an ombre effect.  It turned out pretty cool and I had people oohing and ahhing over it, which was nice.

Once it is painted, you remove the stencil and then once the paint is fully dry, you lightly sand it to reveal the textured layers of paint on the bottom.  My sign didn't dry enough in the class, so I took it home and to finish it.

Here's a close up of the texture.

Once I began the sanding process, the black base layer began to show through, making the sign look really old and distressed.

 What do you think?  Pretty cool yes?

A big thank you to Poppyseed Projects and to the SNAP! team for arranging this for us.


By the way, the moral of this story (for me) is that sometimes a limitation or a problem can actually spur on creativity even more.  Everyone around me did a solid color.  That's what all of the sample boards were, so I just went on auto-pilot and was going to do what the sample suggested.  It was only when I discovered there wasn't enough paint that I went into Problem-Solving-Mode.  I think my end result was better for it, because my sign was different from all of the others.  Learning to use what you've got is a good talent to have.

I'm linking up at Today's Creative Blog and many of the parties seen at the bottom of the blog!