2019 #18 Shaving Foam: Some Experimenting with ETS {by Lucy Edmondson}

2019 Topic 18: Shaving Foam

As we bring our shaving foam experiments to a close, Lucy works with dark and bright reinkers in shaving foam to create this canvas using Tracy's stamps and stencils ~ Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Lucy from Lucy's True Colours with you today, and I'd like to share with you a canvas board made with Tracy Scott's stamps and stencisl and some techniques with shaving foam.

When I first started papercrafting back in 2003, but before I started stamping, I dabbled with shaving foam as many of us did, but was not very happy with the effects. I had some marbling inks which were only available in primary colours and so I found the end results not very subtle. Now we have such a huge range of options available to us that we can float and marble to give so many different looks. in 2014 (and I couldn't believe it was so long ago!) I did some experiments here on the blog with Fresco Finish Paints and really enjoyed using shaving foam again.

So today I knew I wanted to do something different and to do some further experimenting, and had immediately decided I wanted to use Distress Oxide reinkers. I wanted to see if I could dip and swipe with a number of different materials using the foam and Oxide combo. I had mixed results. I knew that because Oxides are chalky they show up on black so I thought I would introduce black backgrounds into my project but I don't feel the nuances of the different colours show up as clearly as they do on white. I quite like the rather dreamy quality it gives though. I felt other aspects of the experiments were more successful.

I started off in the traditional way with my shaving foam and drops of Distress Oxide reinkers in Twisted Citron, Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concorde, Picked Raspberry, Broken China, Abandoned Coral, and Shaded Lilac. I like to use a baking tin covered in foil to make clean up easy. You can then lift it out of the way to clear your work surface so you have space to do your scraping.

I made a feathered pattern with a wooden skewer, making sure to break up any dots of colour.

For my substrate, I painted a piece of canvas board with Fresco Finish Little Black Dress.

I then dipped it in the shaving foam mixture and scraped across once with my ruler. If you're not happy with it, you can repaint your canvas with Little Black Dress.

I did a piece of black cardstock at the same time, to make a matching greetings card. Well, really it was just part of the experiment! The markings seem much more distinct. I don't know why.

I then gold embossed the stem from the large flower from Tracy Scott Eclectica ETS29 onto the canvas.

I dipped pieces of pink tissue paper into the shaving foam mixture. The colours are glorious! You need to take a little care when pulling the ruler across as the shaving foam is a little soggy and the tissue paper is delicate but it's not too difficult to do so.

I then used my pieces of tissue paper to gold emboss the small and large flowers from Tracy Scott Eclectica ETS17 concentrating on the areas where there is most colour, and cut them out and layered them together.

I scooped up some of the surface shaving foam with a credit card (yes, it's buried under there!) and scraped it through Tracy Scott's stencil PS111 onto pink tissue paper and once the flower circles were dry I cut them out. 

I just love this versatile stencil. I cut up pieces of these circles and applied them around the edges of the canvas in a random fashion using gel medium. I love the translucent, veiny look.

I did the same thing onto a piece of canvas sheet from a pad, cut around it, and used my scissors to distress the edges so there were lots of cotton strands. This was one of the bits of the experiment I liked! I used this as a base for my layered tissue paper flowers and positioned it above the gold stem.

I used some of the remaining inky foam on the credit card to scrape across some canvas paper and once it was dry, I gold embossed the word 'Bloom' from Tracy Scott Eclectica ETS29 and roughed up the edges. I positioned this at the base of the flower stem.

To finish off my canvas I added some white text from Tracy Scott Eclectica ETS28 using Fresco Finish Snowflake, some white paint splatters, and some white lace at the bottom which I pleated. 

I took a silver bulldog clip and painted it with Fresco Finish Little Black Dress which adhered beautifully to the metal. Whilst the paint was a little wet, I added some random flecks of gold embossing powder for some rough texture.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing my creative process, what worked and what maybe didn't work so well, and that it has given you some new possibilities to try. I made such a big fat mess along the way I wasn't sure I would manage to get a successful project made at all! You could say it was a close shave!

Blog: Lucy's True Colours
Facebook: Lucy Edmondson
Twitter:@CraftyLuce

2019 #18 Shaving Foam: Festive Foam with ETS {by Chris Dark}

2019 Topic 18: Shaving Foam

Chris has taken Infusions and shaving foam to another level; the beautiful marbled results are inspiring. She has some useful observations when comparing them directly with Fresco Chalk Acrylic paints and creates some boldly coloured marbled patterns.

Hi everyone, it's Chris Dark with you today, and I'd like to share my shaving foam projects for this topic. I hadn't ever tried the shaving foam technique before although I'd seen many lovely creations around the web. It's very satisfying to see the results when you lift up your substrate and scrape away the foam. The crispness of the pattern when using Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics was a nice surprise; this is where my results resembled the marbled papers you see on the inside covers of old books.

I added water to Infusions powders to make my liquid watercolours using Blackcurrant, Golden Sands mixed with Slime and Sleight Blue.  This is definitely my favourite use of the shaving foam technique, I love the boldness of the results. You can see below how that looks before my stamping over the top which in all cases doesn't allow it to show through very much but I really like how I get depth in the layers of colour and stamping with a nice background to start with.

Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics were used for the 'shaving foam with paint' technique in Wolf Eye, Blue Smoke, Iceberg, Midnight, Magic Moss, Waterfall, Electric Violet, Purple Rain and Sorbet and Tracey's gorgeous new stamp set ETS32 for the stamping, such a great addition to her line.

I've turned everything into Christmas cards and I like that I can make stamps not intended for Christmas work with the addition of doodling and festive die cuts.

Starting off with liquid watercolours made by adding water to Infusions powders and you don't need that much powder to get a really vibrant colour.

Splashing the Infusions watercolours onto a bed of shaving foam with a fan brush; love this brush for splashing.

All the colours added randomly.

Swirl the colours around with the end of a paintbrush.

Take a print and scrape off the foam. This is my favourite print!

I mixed together Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in Moss and Midnight and brayered onto the stamp.

I made a pattern all over this sheet. The stamping has a slightly variegated appearance due to the two colours of paint.

Here I've used the paint technique and kept to a blue colour scheme.

On a second print I added some pink to the mix, the effect is crisper with the paints.

A snowflake fest on the next cards, I love how the stamping helps the die cuts to stand out.

This was fun and I'll definitely try it again especially with Infusions trying some different colours and mixing differently on the foam. I hope you'll try it too and let us know your results with Frescos, Infusions or both!

Have a great weekend, I hope you get some art time!

Chris x

Blog: www.sketchingstamper.blogspot.co.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christine.dark.7

Instgram: @chrisd999

Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/cdark4163/

2019 #18 Shaving Foam: Making it Grungy with ESA and EAB {by Nikki Acton}

2019 Topic 18: Shaving Foam

The way Nikki has created a background panel using sections from different coloured shaving foam backgrounds is super eye catching! Seth's stamps fit in perfectly too! ~Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Nikki with you today from Addicted to Art to share my shaving foam inspired project. I used the shaving foam with PaperArtsy Fresco Acrylic paints, but kept my colours minimal using black as a main colour to keep a slightly more grungy feel to my piece.

As you can see I combined elements of different prints to create this panelled 4 x 4 inch canvas.

I used a combination of blues - Blue Lagoon, Glass Blue and Midnight along with Little Black Dress and also Chalk - which I used on black card stock.

Having created the swirly, gorgeous paint / foam combination I took the print for the lovely swirls. With any foam that had relatively fresh paint left I spooned it onto some card and then swiped it to cover. I found this gave me some interesting (if inconsistent) effects - see the piece on the RHS above.

Once my panels were cut to size I edged with Black Archival ink before adhering to the canvas board.

The focal point is the star from Seth Apter ESA03 along with an Alison Bomber quote from the Happiness Edition - EAB14.

I added additional stamping using ESA01 (circle and star) and two of Seth's mini stamps EM33 and EM40.

  

An idea stolen from Seth Apter - I used the little tail on EM40, to add detail to some of the edges. The lines on EM33 were also used at the edge and embossed with white embossing powder.

This is a fun, if a little messy, technique. A bit like gelli printing I find it's worth doing loads in one go to create lots of backgrounds that are then ready for other projects. The PaperArtsy paints work wonderfully in the foam - I also did some with magenta / pink tones (Bougainvillea and Byzantium) which might make an appearance soon!

Thanks for joining me today, I hope you have a creative week.

Nikki x

Blog: Addicted to Art

Instagram: @Nikki_Act

Pinterest: nikacton

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