"Making Waves" by Melissa Struhs

Morning Everyone! I hope that you have all had a safe and relaxing break. During that week between Christmas and New year I have been in a state of using some older supplies or as I refer to it...."Stash Busting" and I found an amazing piece that is designed for colouring and altering. Pefect partner for everything Colour Blast. When you look at the whole layout it looks as if I have been adding laying down layer after layer with all of the patterns you can see...not actually the case at all!

I knew that my photo's really screamed for various shades of blue and the Duke and Navy Colour Shimmer Dusts were a fabulous combination to bring together the light and dark tones I wanted.

In the back of my stash was a 12x12 white resist chipboard sheet that has an all over grid with flourishes in all of the corners, it was hard to photograph but you can see partial amounts of it...

Using the tip of a palette knife, the shimmer dusts were sprinkled randomly

over the surface of the resist chipboard. If you haven't played with them yet, a little goes a long way and you can use them sparingly.

Using a small water spray bottle, a misting was added over the entire piece. A little extra water can be added where the colour hasn't moved to.

You can really help the colours swirl together by tipping the project around so the colour floats where you would like it to go. You can really see the resist patterns lift at this point, the darker the colour, the better it looks.

I had recently seen a rock salt tutorial and thought I would give it a whirl. It was supposed to draw some colour away leaving white patches, but really all it did was take away the moisture leaving patches of dry shimmer dust...Not exactly what I had in mind but interesting. I actually let the project sit for about 12 hours to dry naturally

and this is how it looked after the rock salt was scrapped off.

It also drew a lot of the blue colouring away and left behind a purple. As nice as it was, purple was not what I wanting. I very rarely throw out projects that fail,

I like the challenge of trying to make it right and few hours later made the decision to take several baby wipes to the piles of shimmer dust and buffed it into the patterns even more. This effect was much better as it took away all the residue but still gave you the original look.

My photo's were matted and layered with some basic script and distressed patterned paper before a stencil was applied directly over them with Singin' the Blues and Just Blue Colour Pastes,

a secondary stencil had Deep Water Colour Paste applied as well. I love those 3 colours together for tone on tone effect.

While the pastes were still wet, assorted coloured sequins were embedded for interest.

My title was sprayed and then roughly embossed with Deep Water Colour Shimmer Spray and Deep Water Colour Embossing Powder,

I used no ink during the embossing technique, just hoped the shimmer spray would be enough.

The embossing powder rolls up into small balls as it is heated and looks for something to cling to, creating bubbled appearance. A tropical chipboard leaf also had Deep Water  Colour Embossing Powder added in the same technique. You can see that close up further down the page.

And finally to build an embellishment cluster, filigree metal pieces were inked and embossed with Just Blue  Colour Embossing Powder  a smaller piece was also done in Singin' the Blues  Colour Embossing Powder but I forgot to take a photo of that one... but they look great layered on top of each other.

And lastly, a couple of close up's of the details!

Now it's time to go hunting in the stash for something similar to work some Colour Blast magic on.

Thanks for stopping by,

Mel.