Bad blogger, bad blogger!

I realize that I had promised to share the texture secret from the post before last and forgot to share!!  So, here it is. 

As many of you know, I adore texture and I'll take it any way I can get it.  The best way for me to build up texture is simply by slathering paint on, little by little.  (The way a pallette might look if you don't peel off the dried puddles of acrylic paint).  A little like this:

Scraping, stamping, smooshing, drybrushing, splattering, dripping, dropping and a whole host of other ways of applying paint can be used.  If you apply each layer and allow it to dry before applying the next layer, you will have a lovely, multicolored background with lots of little surprises peeking through (impressions made by stamps with various colors, found object impressions, scraping, dripping -- whatever you did to make the layer).  I love how the background can almost have an aged, shabby look, like years of various colors trying to show themselves.  HOWEVER, this process can take some time, especially if you don't like using a heat gun (because you might wake up the sleeping toddler in the next room).  If you rush, you will make mud.  I mean MUD ...brownish, grayish, yuckishness.  Yucky.  Yuck. 

Don't do that.  It's just altogether yucky.

So to cheat Father Time, I like to collage bits of various thicknesses of paper.  Paper weight paper is great because it requires less gel medium or a lighter weight gel medium.  (Like scrapbook paper, one sided).  Sometimes I tear up old paintings I didn't like that were done on heavy watercolor paper.  That way, I already have painted pieces with lots of variety.  I've also been known
 to paint whole sheets of watercolor paper to tear up for my characters facial features.  Paper is a great way to add texture and variety to your backgrounds.

Knowing this, I became very excited when I came across some old dry wall tape.  DRY WALLTAPE??  Yes, you heard me (read me).  Dry wall, joint tape.  It is glueless, comes on a roll, and is available at any hardware store.  It can be painted, gel mediumed if you will, cut up, laid down in strips, whatever.  It is very absorbent and it is MEANT to be painted or had joint compound spread over it, so it will hold up to whatever you want to do with it.

So, there you have it.  Some of you are sitting there going, "Duh, I so already knew that."  But it was new for me and I always want to share my excitement over new things.  Here's one of my applications...in a journal.  I left the edges uncut -- kind like it that way.  So, new for you or not, give it a try.  Let me know what you think!