experimenting on ATC's

I was kind a curious how the DecoArt Texture crackle would work in real life, I did see a nice pic of crackles on the jar, but had never tried it before.

Also wanted to play at the ATC challenge at Smudgy Antics and the Fun with ATC's challenge black/white/red , I have the texture crackle in Deep tuscany Red and neutral, which is kinda white, and cut out 4 atc's of cardboard, so I was ready to go.

But where to start LOL, I usually don't read the instructions and just start, but for this one I thought I'd do some reading first (I am so proud of myself LOL).  The package didn't say much, apply DecoArt primer/sealer let dry. Open jar  and apply the texture crackle with a palette knife and let dry.......Easy hey, so followed instructions and dried the texture crackle with my heat gun, worked great. (be careful not to boil it though)

I used the red Texture crackle first and when dry I did notice that a thin layer gave fine cracks and a thicker layer bigger cracks, I had just put on some of the texture crackle without taking care of it being even on all spaces. I wanted an aged look so it doesn't matter if things are even.  Some of the cracks made the card shine through and I didn't want that.

and cause of experimenting I thought to see what would happen if I put the neutral texture crackle over the red,cover one atc completly and a small part of another one.

I hoped that the cracks in the white would show the red layer beneath, but that didn't happen. It still looked very nice though. For the challenge I needed black/white and red, so covered the atc's with Americana acrylic lamp black paint (DA067), let dry a bit and then cleaned them using a babywipe, making sure the black would go in the cracks and leave a bit of black over the whole surface.

i used the palette knife to get some of the neutral texture crackcle of, of the ATC that was completly covered in neutral texture crackle.  and rubbed some sizzling red So Soft Fineglitter paint (DSSG03) over the atc just as I did with the black,same treatment paint let dry whipe and get it in the cracks.

Now I was ready to stamp LOL.  Not easy stamping on cracks but it's do able. I added some of the glamour dust glitter paint DGD21 Black Ice on the edges and this is the result

 

 

 

I love the cracks, but the stamping (all stamps used are from de Stempelwinkel) didn't show very well, and  I wanted to see if I could get the stamps better visible by applying DecoArt Triple Thick gloss glaze.

 

A little tip from me, make sure your stamp ink is waterproof LOL

the black was.................

 

the white wasn't, the ATC with the white skull and tree got smudged,......... disaster........O well it happens I and sometimes things can be saved.

 

I let the gloss glaze dry and stamped with black over the smudged white skull  and tree, then I added black Ice (DGD21)  glamour dust paint over the Grave Tidings senti stamp

 

here the finished atc's including the one that got smudged and stamped again, the triple thick gloss glaze made it hard to take a pic, gloss reflects light can'tbe helped.

In real life it make the stamps come out much more and gives the ATC's some depth.

I really liked how they turned out, the glitter paint looks awesome IRL, and you can see the cracks real well throught the gloss glaze. Experiment succeeded :-)