Faux Batik (resist) Technique - Tutorial Part 2

Hello again and welcome to Part 2 of this tutorial.

You can find Part 1 here
and the evolution of a journal page here

In Part 1 I showed you how to use heat embossed stamped images as a resit for sprayed Dylusions inks. In this tutorial I am going to take a different twist on the technique and show you the results when using the same basic principles with an embossing pen.

I wanted to explore the faux batik technique a little further to produce the focal image for my journal page. I knew that somewhere in my stash I had a Whispers Embossers pen and I was intrigued to see the results of using the technique with a hand drawn, rather than stamped, design.

I decided that my focal image was going to be a "sort of" peacock. "Sort of" for three reasons, firstly my drawing skills are not good, secondly because the colours I needed to use to co-ordinate with my background were NOT traditional peacock colours, and thirdly because I was going to make the tail from leaf, rather than feather shapes.

You will need:

White or Manila cardstock (I've used white)
Pencil
Black pen (see Step 6 below)
Whispers Embossers pen
Clear Embossing powder
Heat tool
Dylusions spray inks
Kitchen roll
Scrap or brown (not greaseproof) paper
Iron
Scissors
Wet glue
Graphite or charcoal pencil

Step 1

Draw and cut out cardstock for peacock body and leaf/feather shape.

Step 2

Draw round templates to get idea of overall design and number of feathers required.

Step 3

Draw round the template to create enough feathers for tail design (plus a couple of spares).

 Step 4

Draw your feather/leaf design with the embossing pen and then cover with clear embossing powder, shake off the excess and return to the pot. I did one feather at a time as I wasn't sure how much drying time my Embossers pen would give me.

Step 5 (not shown)

Use your heat tool to melt the embossing powder.

Step 6

Spray your inks randomly over the entire page. You can flick water on to the page if you like. Then roll over with kitchen towel to remove excess ink. Allow to dry.

Rather stupidly I didn't use a permanent ink to draw these shapes - so when I sprayed the very wet ink my lines bled - badly. Using the maxim, that there are no mistakes in art - this meant that I could still cut out my leaf shapes but would not have to ink the edges - ta dah!

Step 7 (not shown see tutorial Part 1 for pics)

Place a piece of brown (shiny side up) or scrap paper over the embossed design and iron with a DRY iron until all the embossing powder has been melted and lifted off the inked page - you will see greasy looking marks appear on the scrap paper. If the scrap paper gets stuck just keep ironing until it lifts off.

Step 8

Cut out the leaf shapes and arrange behind the body. I glued mine with  Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive, sticking only the bottom of the leaf to give some dimension. The body was cut from a piece of cardstock randomly sprayed with co-ordinating ink, some ink splatter stamping and the edges were inked with Black Soot DI.

Step 9

The addition of an eye, beak and top knot gave the bird some personality.

Step 10

I used a soft graphite pencil to add definition around the outside of the bird

And a harder graphite pencil to give definition between the leaf shapes.

Step 11 

Using the same resist technique I created my quote using alphabet stamps and Black Marble Dylusions ink on white cardstock. The quote is the first line of a 17th Century poem which kind of fit the bill...

So there you have it, my completed journal page using two takes on the Faux Batik (resist) Technique. I hope you enjoyed it and that you will give it a go - if you do please let me know - I'd love to see what you create.

Thanks for looking