Spring is here!

As today is officially the first day of Spring, I thought I would celebrate by showcasing our Swallows stencil as they will be returning from their epic migration soon to come home to roost.  They are always a sign that Spring has arrived around here.  After a week of bitterly cold temperatures, high winds and snow showers, it is a beautiful sunny day here in the North of England and one can certainly believe Spring has arrived.  Our swallows stencil is a sheet of three different sized swallows that you can use in any configuration you like.  We simply stencilled ours with black paint in a swooping arc across the wall.  For the final touch, we applied a layer of gold glitter glaze over the top that is quite subtle but really sings when the light catches it.  Spring flowers are blooming in our garden and all the trees are in bud.  It is nice to see everything "springing" back to life again.  The only cloud on the horizon is that our clocks go forward this weekend which means an hour's less sleep! R.

Comments

[C.Nelson]

I was curious about how you applied the glitter glaze. It is beautiful and I can only imagine how striking the glaze must be in person.

Would you mind sharing what tool you used and how you got the effect? Are the lighter spots at the right the glaze or was that something you did when you prepped the wall with the shading of the color from light to dark?

[stencil helen]

Hi Carolyn.
All the lighter spots around the wall are the result of light hitting the glaze. It is right beside a large west/north facing window. As the sun moves so does the reflections on the wall. At sunset, the whole wall reflects the colours of the sky.
The wall was painted with matt emulsion (latex) paint. I adhered a length of low tack masking tape along the ceiling line, another above the base board and one at each side of the wall. The wall looked like it had picture frame around it...formed from masking tape. I put a border of tape around the door frame too. The glitter gaze was a product called Liquigems from Liquitex. I am not able to order them at the moment but I went on line and apparently you can still buy them in the USA. www.liquitex.com
I diluted the silver coloured Liquigem with two parts acrylic scumble (which I do sell) to one part water. The liquigems was around a tablespoon full to a pint of mixture. I put a one inch wall painting brush into the glaze, worked off the excess onto the side of the mixing dish so that only a thin layer of glaze was applied to the wall. It is better to build up several thin layers of glaze than to apply it heavily. I used a a rough cross hatch and scrub method with the brush. When complete, I removed the masking tape to reveal a bordered frame of untinted matt paint

[stencil helen]

Hello Helen,

This is great instruction! I just have a couple additional questions:

1. You say you put a thin layer of the liquigem/scumble onto the wall because several thin layers are better than a single heavy layer -- so did you put more than one coat on the wall, or just one thin layer?

Several thin layers.

2. In your cross-hatch, scrub technique, did you try to completely cover the surface of the wall that you had taped off, or were you trying to leave some spots without glaze?

I covered everything

3. So was the mixture 1 1/3 c scumble, 2/3 c water, yielding a pint (a pint is 2c yes?) and then adding 1T liquigem? Did I interpret that right?

Mix 1 tablespoon silver liquigem and 2/3 acrylic scumble glaze to 1/3 water to yield approx 1 pt.... or you can make small batches in a tea cup and just mix more if needed.

I have a feeling that if I was more familiar with the texture of scumble paint, these questions might be more obvious to me, but I’m having a bit of a time trying to visualize the whole process.
Thanks again,
Carolyn

Acrylic scumble glaze is a transparent medium. It looks like milk but is without colour and transparent when dry.
Helen.
Helen.