Saturday Step x Step - Fractured Felt

Hello, it is Cec here and today I am presenting the Saturday Step x Step feature and bringing you a little canvas I made and am calling Fractured Felt for one of the elements I created. Since the Design Team is celebrating all things Wendy Vecchi, I made sure to use some of her fabulous products in this project.

I started with a 5"x7" canvas that I picked up at the dollar store and gave it a coat of Gesso first.  Then I painted it with some Craftsmart Silver Gray acrylic paint.

I dry brushed the canvas with a light coat of Gesso to knock back the gray a bit and then sprayed it with some ink sprays - Dylusions White Linen followed by Tim Holtz Hickory Smoke and Brushed Pewter Distress Spray Stain.

Now it was time to fracture some felt.  I took a piece of white polyester craft felt from my stash (you can find it at craft stores, fabric stores and dollar stores, it comes in small rectangles and is available in many colours) and cut it to the size I wanted.  Next I painted it with some White Pearl Metallic paint from DecoArt and while it was still wet I sprinkled some Stampendous Silver Embossing Powder on some of the painted areas.

I would suggest you work in sections and that you use a palette knife to push the embossing powder into the paint.  I didn't push the embossing powder into the paint and I ended up with it everywhere. Also make sure that you have the paint touching other areas of paint and some parts of the edges.

The next step is to take your heat gun to the felt and what happens is that the embossing powder melts and any areas that are not painted will also melt and create holes and the edges will shrivel a bit.

Once I had melted (fractured) my felt I decided that the White Pearl paint was too yellow so I went back over some areas with White acrylic paint from Delta Ceramcoat and sprinkled on some Snow Embossing Powder from Recollections.  Then I carefully heated it again in those areas.

Note:  I tried this with some by-the-yard felt from my sewing cupboard that I suspect was not all polyester and it did melt but it did not create holes, it just shriveled and became wavy, which is also a cool look.

Next I made the flowers by stamping the bloom from the Build a Blossom Stamp-it, Stencil-it by Wendy Vecchi twice onto some of her Clearly for Art Blackout using Versamark.  I heat embossed them with Silver Embossing Powder from Stampendous and then fussy cut them.  I clipped between the petals and then used my heat gun to soften them so I could shape them.  It helps to have someone else hold the heat gun so you can shape while the material is still soft so my husband was pressed into service for this task.

I covered some die cut leaves with some Silver Sterling Metallic paint from Folk Art and then shaped them with a large embossing tool.

The heart was hand cut from a scrap of card stock and stamped with a Script stamp from IndigoBlu using some Versamark.  Then I heat embossed it with some of Wendy Vecchi's Red Geranium Embossing Powder.

Before I assembled the canvas I inked the edges of the leaves and heart with some Tim Holtz Hickory Smoke Distress Ink and then layered all the elements starting with the fractured felt.  I added a Big Chat sticker from Tim Holtz for a sentiment.  There is no real reason why I chose that word except maybe that this is a project that worked out the way it was in my head so I feel blessed.

I was recently playing with different materials to see what the effect would be if I took my heat gun to them. I love what happens to craft felt and hope that I have inspired you to give this a try.