March Challenge - using color wash/Radiant Rain mister

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Here is the first technique. You are welcome to change it or to try something different using the color wash and/or Radiant Rain misters. Please send me an email and let me know what you thought of it. If you want, you can send me a scan and I will put it on this blog. I am sure that other people would love to see what you did.

BTW, the March Challenge is for the Mixed Media Art Yahoo group.

This first technique is using brown packaging paper, color wash, and gold Radiant Rain misters. Optional are stamp pads, Shiva sticks, stamps and permanent ink stamp pads.

1. You may choose to crumple and uncrumple before doing this technique. Depends on the texture you want.

Note: Make sure you put your brown paper on top of some newspaper or a plastic tarp. Color Wash stains my hands and it takes several days for it to completely come off even if I use special soap.

2. Spray the surface of your brown packaging paper. I like to use the thinner paper because it will be easier to work with as a background later on. The color wash will pool on the paper. I used a cheap paintbrush and spread the color wash on until the whole surface was covered. You may decide to just pour some color wash in a little bowl and use the paint brush to apply. You can use several colors in different spots, if desired. Color wash does not layer well unless each layer is dry first. You end up with a muddy color if you spray too many colors on top of each other.

3. If you crumpled, then crumple again and uncrumple.

4. Take the Radiant Rain mister and mist the entire surface or random areas. Let dry completely.

5. Once dried, you can use a Shiva and go over the peaks of the paper. You can also put a broad lined stamp underneat the paper and run the Shiva over it. You can run a stamp pad over the paper for contrast. What I do is use a text stamp with black stazon and stamp it all over the paper. Let dry.

Radiant Rain tips: You need to shake the mister well before and while you are using it. The color has a tendency to sink to the bottom. You may also experience a clog in the sprayer part after non-use for several days. When that happens, I just shake the Radiant Rain bottle and pour into another mister container. I mist, pour back the excess, and then clean out the 2nd mister. Make sure you spray water through the mister several times to get the Radiant Rain particles out.

You do not have to use gold for this technique. Any Radiant Rain mister color will work. If you do not have a local source for Adirondack Color Wash or Radiant Rain, then you might want to try Frances Naeve at heartsintouch.com (for color wash) or Fran at franticstamper.com for both Radiant Rain and Color Wash. They are the two vendors that I use.