Hello my friends! Welcome to my blog.
One of the challenges on the
One Little Tag Craft Challenge that I have been participating in was to do some backgrounds using a shaving cream technique. I have herd of this before and seen it in books, but never attempted it. Quite honestly, it wasn't something that was on my "Gotta try that" list. But, prompted by the challenge. I thought I would give it a try.
The first thing required, of course, shaving cream. I got a can at the dollar store. I don't think it matters what kind you use, but it does have to be cream, NOT gel. Jenny Barnett Rohrs, the creator of the One Little Tag Facebook challenge, did this technique using food colouring. I didn't have any food colouring so I used my Dr. PH Martin watercolours. You could also use re-inkers, if you have them. I used Recollections cardstock from Michaels. I covered my work surface with newspaper and used my craft mat.
I spread the cream over my craft mat and added some drops of the watercolour onto the cream. If you try this, be sure to use colours that play well together, because they will mix.
I used the end of a paintbrush to run through the cream and paint (gently) to create a sort of design. I didn't want to mix it too much so that the paint didn't combine and make one colour, I wanted to maintain different colours. Once I was happy with what I had done, I took a sheet of cardstock and placed it onto the cream. I tapped it gently, but didn't push heavy enough to squish down the cream very much. Then I lifted the sheet off the cream.
There was still shaving cream on the cardstock and I used a paper towel to wipe it off. That was not the best thing to do. It smeared the colour all over the sheet and obscured the pattern I had created. I will still use this, but I wasn't happy with my first "pull". On the next ones I did, I used a piece of card to gently scrape the cream off the paper.
I ended up with some nice marbled looking patterns.
Finally, after they dried, I trimmed down the sheets into tag backgrounds that I will use at some point. And guess what they smell like!
This technique is messy, I will admit. After I cleaned off the craft mat after the first colour, I just sprayed the cream directly onto the newspaper, so that I could just roll it up and through it in the trash when I was finished. That was an easier clean up.
At first my thinking was that , now that I've tried it , I'm god, I don't need to try it again. But now, a couple of days later, I think I probably will. Some of the tags look pretty cool and I've found myself thinking of different colour combinations and different ways of doing it.
This is something that you could do with kids and they would love. I would probably stick to the food colouring with kids, though. And maybe use some gloves to prevent hands from becoming stained. .
Summer vacation is here, so this might be a good time to try some messy fun to try with the kids, or by yourself for a great background for a mixed media project.
Well, thank you for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed the shaving cream technique! If you di, please share with others that you think may want to give it a try.
