Brush Effects!

Well.

I am probably going to wax rhapsodic about this, until you become overwhelmed with minutiae and boredom and unsubscribe from my feed, from my emails, from my snail mail, from my coupons, and from my telemarketing. However, this Street Team challenge has been so awesome I must tell you all about it. This is a challenge profound in its simplicity. A challenge dizzying in its perspective. A challenge that's actually oblong in its aspect ratio!

This project will undoubtedly continue to be a challenge for days. I have so many ideas for the use of these techniques that I'm sure some of them are illegal. Or maybe I'm finally simply 'getting it'. I don't know. All I know is, not unlike drinking an iced triple-venti 2/3 decaf nonfat caramel macchiato with easy syrup, if everyone did this there would be world peace.

What you do first is: you go here. And you read the tutorial and look at the pictures. Now, that's enough to just do you in, all by itself. But, then:

You get out scrap papers (mine were the back of an earlier surface and some paper frame waste) and you start working with brush effects. You select a previously unacceptable surface, say, a page you've plastered St. Patrick's Day paper napkins all over, and you say to yourself, 'we're just going to practice, it's doesn't have to count, or anything.' And then you do just what she says because when you go to her class in October she's going to be telling you what to do and you might as well get used to it now.

Here's what happened when I applied dry brush to paint and then to scrap paper and then to surface:


Shut up! You know it's working. You can feel it! I think you can sort of see the paper napkin under all the dry brushing and the dry-brush monotyping. Even though I followed the directions on the Street Team adult-dosage directions and warning label, I still had my doubts about whether I was going to be able to pull this off without everything looking like MUD. You know what I'm talking about, yes? You, in the back? Pretending to read, but definitely sleeping?

On the wings of this uncertain success with dry-brushing, I did some more monotyping. I took a coffee sleeve with a bubbly texture, and I dry-brushed onto it and laid it down. Then I took the spool from a roll of adding maching tape (which I save and bring home from work with the knowledge that one day they will make amazing articulated spool-people), and imprinted some rounds onto the surface with paint. Aren't those segmented circle thingies neato? Anyone? Mr. Snooze? Yes, they are. Very good.



Then, what you do is, you do more dry brushing. And then, I remembered all the way to last week, when I cut a four-leaf clover stencil and actually was able to use it. So, I got that out and pounced paint onto it. I was inspired to do some pouncing by Jeri Ann,who had already submitted her Street Team Challenge entry and must be awarded team-player status. Along with everyone else who's playing. Anyway, I pounced, and I got the stenciled images you see here. I also dry-brush-monotyped again and did some more coffee sleeve business and more spool stamping because I clearly don't have boundaries. And here's the finished product.



I didn't gloss gel it yet, as I often do, because I may just journal on the darn thing. I'm that happy with it. And here are a couple of macros of the dry brushing, parts of which turned out particularly yummy over the dry wrinkled napkin surface.





Oh, I'm not patting myself on the back. This is the result of excellent teaching by Michelle, and excellent inspiration from the team, and I also have to give my mom and dad credit, and a list of people too long to name, even for me.

Don't think this is the last entry for me, either, my peeps! I still have more stamping to do, reverse stenciling, dirty-brushing (Michelle Ward-patented term), and I actually have a couple of Gocco screen prints to lay down, sandwiched between brushes. Isn't that fabulous? It's like Christmas in March!


Next up: Chris dry-brushes mayo on her Gocco-screen sandwich and has to order out.