I was playing around with my encaustic iron and some cheapo oil pastels I have and came across this little easy background discovery!

What You Need:

How To Create:

1. Heat your iron up so its nice and hot, then take an oil pastel crayon and rub it on the hot iron to melt, iron the colour onto the sheet of parchment paper and move it around the surface.

2. Repeat step 1 using different colours of oil pastels until you have a nice big pool of hardened colour on your baking parchment in different colours.

It will look a mess at this point and something like this:

3. Take a sheet of card stock and place it over the parchment paper, using the iron; iron the back of the cardstock to make the oil pastels melt and transfer onto the card stock in a lovely marble like pattern. Allow to cool and use them in your stamping projects - easy!

Tip: Black gloss card looks stunning with this background technique! After the oil pastels have cooled down you can buff up the surface with a piece of tissue to clean it up and make the black gloss card surface pop out. You can use any colour card stock but the effects are more stunning on black. You can use matt card stock too - the wax doesnt sit on the surface like it does with gloss and they blend together more. See my samples below for visuals.

Gloss Card Stock Backgrounds:

Stamped Gloss Backgrounds (stamped with acrylic paints)


Stamped With Brilliance Inks:

Matt Card Stock Backgrounds:

Stamped With Memories Dye Inkpad:

Art and Words By Trish Bayley 2004