Donna Salazar Designs: "Together" Masculine Mixed Media Card by ~ Tracey Sabella

Hi everyone. It's Tracey here to share a special masculine card I created for my wonderful husband. Gary and I will be celebrating our anniversary on Friday ~ thirty-three years!!

While I enjoy creating feminine girlie grunge projects with Donna's fabulous products, I also adore the challenge of going masculine for the guys in my life.

Tips and Techniques

An easy way to achieve a lovely finish on chipboard is with embossing powder. I pressed the chipboard into my Jasmine Clearsnap Mix'd Media Inx pad, and covered with Jasmine Mix'd Media Inx Embossing Powder before heat embossing.

I hand cut this heart from the denim banner in Donna's newly released Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L Pennant Set. I distressed the edges and lightly dry brushed with gesso. To give the heart some body, I cut a slightly smaller heart from thin cardboard and adhered it to the back of my denim heart.

I used Donna's new Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L Pigment Powders to transform black cardstock into grungy metallic gears. I was going to mix the powder into matte medium to create a shimmery paint, but unfortunately it had gone bad. So I looked through my stash and because I wanted something that was colorless, I tried my transparent crackle paint. It worked perfectly. To get the dark gold, I mixed both gold and brown powder into the crackle medium. Then I set aside a small amount of this mixture and added blue pigment powder for a patina effect. I cut and embossed the gears from black cardstock using Donna's Spellbinders Sprightly Sprockets dies, then rubbed the dark gold colored paint across the gears, then went back and rubbed some of the patina medium randomly onto the gears. Because it is applied so thinly, there's no crackling on the gears like there is on the other places where I applied a heavier coat of the medium.

The canvas strips from Donna's Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L Canvas Ribbons are left from a previous project, dyed and stamped with Donna's Mix'd Media Inx.

I grunged up one of Donna's 3D Foam Keys from Scrapbook Adhesive by 3L. I started by lightly sprinkling on Donna's Clearsnap Leather Mix'd Media Inx Embossing Powder, then rubbed her brown Pigment powder into the remaining sticky adhesive areas. I wanted to finish off the sides of the key, so mixed brown pigment powder into transparent crackle paint. I applied this to the sides of the key, randomly across the top, and randomly to the metal key.

For a stenciling medium I mixed Donnas blue Pigment Powder into more of the transparent crackle paint. To get a darker blue, I also mixed in some of her Indigo Mix'd Media Inx. After stenciling, and while still wet, I lightly sprinkled with Denim Mix'd Media Inx Embossing Powder and heat set.

I hope you've been inspired to grab some of Donna's new products

and try out some grungy masculine techniques.

~ Blessings ~

Tracey