Hello Everyone,
Wow, don't the months just whiz by ............. especially when you're having fun as I've been doing this month learning how to use a product which is completely new to me. I will own up now, I have never used pastels of any kind in my life before now and think I've probably started on the pastel 'learning curve' with the best there is. These pans of colour are absolutely gorgeous and you can create a blended background very quickly or you can spend as long as you want either building layers or colouring an image. I'm sure there is lots more for me to discover using the Pan Pastels but at least anyone who has never used them before can see that a complete beginner can achieve lovely results quite easily.
For my first project I wanted to try the pastels on something other than card so I decided to decorate a textured tile I'd had in my stash for quite some time.
I laid down rough bands of colour more or less diagonally across the tile starting with Red Iron Oxide Shade followed by the Tint, then Chromium Oxide Green Shade followed by Tint and finally Turquoise Tint followed by Shade. Believe it or not it we were having a period of brilliant sunshine when I took my photos and no matter how I tried it kept bleaching the colour from the lightest colours. I had wanted them quite subtle but not invisible, lol! I then placed a honeycomb mask over random areas and added more of the base colours. I really liked the way the rough texture of the tile grabbed the colour more on the peaks. I did a little more masking with a piece of sequin waste.
I then stamped a border onto tissue paper using the bare stem stamp from Studio 490 Make Mine Mini Art and adhered this to the tile with matte Multi Medium. Next I stamped a flower with stem and leaves from the same Studio 490 set onto Grungepaper three times using Onyx Black Archival ink. I stamped the same flower (without inking the stem and leaves) several more times onto the Grungepaper and then cut all of them out. I coloured all of the flowers with Distress Markers which, I have found, blend quite well on Grungepapers. When they were dry I curled all the flower petals before adhering them to the tile.
I then stamped several of the little butterflies from Studio 490 Make Mine Mini Art and one large butterfly from Nature's Art, cut them all out and coloured them with Pan Pastels Violet Tint and Shade before curling their wings. I adhered these to the tile and finally added some Ideology little safety pins and a metal leaf to the butterfly bodies. Finally, as I don't have any proper sealer I gave the whole project a decent spray with a cheap hairspray which seemed to work just fine.
I thoroughly enjoyed making this project and found it extremely easy to cover the background. I was also pleasantly surprised at how well the Pan Pastels worked on the Grungepaper too.
I'll be back again in a couple of days with another Pan Pastel project so hope you call back for a look. In the meantime, don't forget, if you haven't already done so, leave a comment on HERE this month to have a chance of Random.org picking you to win a set of these lovely pastels.
Hugs
Lesley Xx
