Welcome Darcy Wilkinson #1 ....

"Hello and welcome to my first guest blogger post. Today I have a quick and simple project to get us started".

I was looking for some cork coasters, after searching my local stores I gave up and bought a pack of plain black ones from the supermarket. I planned to paint over the black coating, but as I pulled them from the packaging a little of the black coating came away. I am so glad this happened at this point, rather than after I had painted them. 

I peeled off the rest of the black, then lightly misted the white backing paper that was left behind with a little water and gently rubbed it with my fingers till I was left with 4 blank cork coasters.

I then gave each coaster a thin coat of PVA glue mixed with a little water, this was just to seal them. Now onto the decorating. I started with a few small blobs of paint randomly dotted onto the surface. Tinned Peas, Sky, Baltic Blue and Guacamole.

I took a metal scraper, you could just as easily use an old credit card, and scraped the colours in one smooth motion from top to bottom.

I turned the coaster around and scraped again from top to bottom.

I really liked how the shape of the blobs was left behind the stripes of the scraping.
Once the paint was dry I used Adirondack Colour Wash sprays through a couple of stencils.

I left these to dry and then I used a brayer to add a generous coat of Snowflake Fresco paint. It looks slightly pink, that is the dye colourwash ink from the previous layer pushing through.

Once the white layer was dry it was time to stamp. I sorted out 4 flower stamps from the following sets.

 HP 1009

HP1204

and 1 from Mini 68

I added them using Archival Ink (Jet Black). I also added some random dots using Mini 72

Now the fun part, make sure the black ink is completely dry, then take a damp baby wipe and start to rub back some of the layers. The harder you rub the more layers will come off so take it easy to start with. In some parts I rubbed right back to the brown of the original coaster.

Don't be afraid to rub away parts of your flowers, we are going for a shabby/worn away style here. The next thing that happened was a happy accident. I knew the inks would show through, what I didn't expect was that they would kind of bloom and rise quite dramatically to the surface. I really like the effect, it reminds me of old fashioned wallpaper. I left them to dry fully and then I gave each one 2 coats of gloss medium to seal them and add a shiny surface.

That's it all done, a set of shabby chic coasters, all you need now is a tea party to show them off.

Leandra Says: Ahhh, you got the cupcakes in there! How cool does the Wild Plum C/wash look! I remember I had once sprayed a canvas with lots of lettuce green/ denim blue colourwash on top of paints. Decided I didn't like it, and would start over. Tried to gesso/ white paint over the top, and it kept coming though...never thought to deliberately re-create this though!

Gillian Says: Love Love Love this idea Darcy, such a brilliant transformation. can I come for tea? x

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