'Old School' 3 -Salt!

Hello!
Another old favourite inky technique today, although this time I've only used bits of the background created on my final piece! My finished creation is this page...

The bright red poppy heads are the product of todays spotlight technique: Salt backgrounds!
Adding rock salt to wet ink is a great way to create fab texture and interest, and it's really simple too!
Step1: Prepare! The is messy, so put your card down on a wipe clean surface.

Step 2: Spray! (or drip...) Any drippy ink will work for this, acrylic inks, ink sprays, stains, you name it. I knew I was going to use the result for a poppy head, so I sprayed in just the one colour. You can go as bonkers with the colours as you want!

Step 3: Reactivate the inks with a little more water so the surface is nice and wet...

Step 4: Add on the rock salt...

Step 5: Spray with a little more water to make sure the salt has a nice wet bond with the surface..

Step 6: Now you can go one of two ways. Leave it to dry by itself, or blast with a heat gun. Drying naturally gives nice results...but for the impatient.....Blast with the heat gun!

Step 7: Once ALL the ink is dry, wait until the cardstock and salt is cool. It's really quite surprising how hot salt gets! Once cold, rub off the salt...

Step 8: Admire the fab textures and design the salt creates!

I then cut circles from my salty background, and added seed beads to the centres to give me my poppies.

I typed straight onto an old book page to give me my title...

Which was very apt, because I wanted to doodle my way around the rest of the piece, no stamps at all. I was a bit hesitant about letting go and creating the stems and leaves of my poppies, so really needed to believe in myself!

I *think* it worked, but need a lot more playing about until I'm confident!
Have a go with the salt, its a really nice technique!

See you soon,
Trish xxxxx