  Acrylic Paint Backgrounds By Trish Bayley
Try it yourself and you’ll be surprised – theres an artist in each of us just screaming to get out when you use these paints! Theres no hard and fast rules for these backgrounds, the most important thing is that you have fun and enjoy yourself! Simply splat that paint on your card stock to create multicolour backgrounds. You can sponge, paint or finger paint it on! When dry STAMP them! Heres how I did mine:Materials Used:
Rubber Stamps Used: How To Create:
For the red and yellow background shown in the main sample below; I first coated the card with Red paint, then without waiting for the acrylc paint to dry, I took another sponge and streaked on other colours (yellow, orange, pink and more red) I did this in any old fashion - I was aiming more for accents and movements and texture in the paint layers and didn’t just spread it on flatly. Continue until you get a pleasing effect that YOU like and then set aside to dry.
Experiment with different colour inkpads for different effects. On the main card shown I stamped the background images using Port Red to give the background some dimension, then I finished of by over stamping the background in black with my main images. When painting your backgrounds EXPERIMENT and explore different colour combos - one of my backgrounds was actually black card stock and I coated it with different colours of orange and yellow and red paints to see if I could make the colours stand out against the black card background. I used ordinary white copier card stock for my backgrounds - they did warp slightly when they had dried, but I have a way of fixing that - I bend the background in the opposite direction of the warp and then I place it under a stack of magazines or books and it flattens it out no problem. I didn’t dilute the acrylic paints - I just sponged them on as they are - you can control how much colour you put on by applying more or less paint – use a plastic food bag as your paint palette and lift and tap off excess paint onto the plastic and then smoosh onto the card itself – experiment with using less and more paint to create the different instensities - the less paint on your sponge the drier it is and therefore the less paint you put on your background which allows the previous layers to show through. BEFORE STAMPING AFTER STAMPING MORE BACKGROUND SAMPLES 
Art and Words By Trish Bayley 2004 |
Im such a background addict! I love to play with paints and inks and smoosh and splash and make a mess! Im such a magpie when it comes to multicolour backgrounds! So I had to have a go and see what I could come up with using el cheapo acrylic craft paints! 
