Prepare by making taking your eggshells and soaking in warm water and a dash of antibacterial soap. (I've been told to soak it overnight, but I found soaking it for an hour worked well for me) ...I had loads of eggs because I made a big batch of Eggs Benedict for my family one evening and saved all the shells! :)
Now you'll want to make sure you pull out all the inner membrane in the shells. This is a necessary step, otherwise your shell pieces won't stick to your chipboard, the glue will only adhere to the membrane and the shell could fall off. So be sure to remove all of it. For me, most of it came off in big sections (I find if you use really fresh eggs the membrane comes off easily).
Step 1: I've said it before....I save everything! Here I used the pop out squares from a window chipboard design frome Dusty Attic. Normally these would be discarded but I thought I'd use them as the base for my mosaic. You can also hand cut out shapes from scrap pieces of chipboard to use as your base (I cut out some hearts for another upcoming project) ...now to the point..paint your chipboard pieces with a little bit of Gesso, white acrylic paint will work just as well.
Step 2: For a small mosaic piece such as above, I just cover the whole piece thoroughly with some glue...I used Aleene's Tacky Glue. But if you are working with bigger pieces of chipboard, work in smaller sections.
Step 3: The quickest and easiest way to do this is to take a larger piece of eggshell, place it on the glue (curved side up) and push down with your finger to crack. Allow some of the cracks to be a little larger so that when you color your piece the ink will show more in the cracks.
Step 4: Use small bits of eggshell to fill in area's that did not get covered by the first piece of eggshell. Don't worry about bits of the egshell hanging over the edges. Allow the glue to dry completely and then carefully crack off the excess eggshell bits.
Step 5: Once you've cracked off the excess bits of eggshell from the edges, just take some sandpaper or a sanding block and gently sand the edges if needed.
Now the fun part! Pull out your alcohol inks, Perfect Pearls (mica dust) or Glimmer Mist. The key is to use translucent colors for staining your pieces, the effect is nicest with clear colors as opposed to opaque paints. ...Too much color? no probem, just dab with a paper towel to remove excess, if it's already dried, use a little bit of Tim Holtz Alcohol Blending Solution to remove or lighten the colors. Here I used a combination of Tim Holtz 'Pool' and 'Meadow' alcohol inks. (sorry about the poor photo for this one, I was taking the photo with my left hand while trying to squirt on the alcohol ink for the pic :)
I added a wee bit of glimmer to my mosaics with some Inca Gold Pearlex (Mica dust)....or you could use some spritzes of Glimmer mist instead. I finished it off by giving the whole thing a nice thick coat of Glossy Accents to give the pieces a nice shine. Let your piece dry, and then it's ready for use! I added one of the new Websters Pages Charms to accent the center mosaic piece
No comments:
Post a Comment