In yesterday’s post I showed you my first week’s pages for Glamour Additions. I had several people ask me about the backgrounds I used to make the title page. Really easy to make and very little cost involved. Let me show you.

This is the first page in my spiral bound book I made using Bristol Illustrated papers from Hahnemühle. The perfect paper for this type of book – I am using my book for the entire ten weeks of Glamour Additions. I wanted the cover to be eye-popping which to me means lots of beautiful, bright color!

Mark and I were at Walmart back before the COVID days began and I found these little bottles of paint that I had never tried before. And if I had realized the company had double layered the labels on this bottle I would have used a different one for my photo. Sorry for the blurry-eyed look. Anyhoo, I was really just playing around, seeing what the colors looked like. I grabbed a palette knife and spread some of the yellow onto my paper. Bright and lovely.

I think I bought five colors to try and I smeared some of the others onto this same piece of paper. And I realized as I went that I didn’t like it at all, but I really just wanted to see what the colors looked like, so I continued. And it looked like ick! at this point.

But I was not to be deterred. Hahahaha! Stubborn as I am! I spread a layer of white over the whole piece and suddenly it wasn’t so icky! Not great but not awful.

On the second piece I was a little more careful and didn’t go crazy with the color. I always like pink and yellow together.

After they dried I wanted to add a little sparkle to them. Splatter or spatters, I’m never sure which to call them. I put a little dollop of that white paint on my craft mat . . .

. . . spritzed on some water . . .

. . . and mixed it together with my fan brush. Then I took that loaded fan brush and . . .

. . . tapped the brush against a finger of my left hand and made splatters onto the papers. And you can really see here why I use a craft mat underneath. All that color wipes away with a paper towel.

This piece looks even better with the splatters. I made a total of four different color pieces. Unfortunately I only took photos of these two.

Dry. I love it!

And the other piece dry. I like it much more than to start with. Hahahaha! Now let’s look at my cover again.

You can see part of those two pieces in the top row – center and right. I really love how this page turned out! The best part is how inexpensive those little Walmart paints were. Just 98 cents a bottle and they will last me for a really long time! Now I wish I had purchased all the colors. A girl can never have too much color!
Bristol Illustrated and other Hahnemühle products with purchase links
6 thoughts on “Inexpensive Backgrounds”
Really pretty colors! Finished cover is awesome..
Thanks for info.
P
you’re welcome. stay safe, dear friend
Fabulous! And I’m sure you’ll have the chance to buy the rest of the colors sooner or later.
hahaha! maybe one day. I’ve been inside Walmart twice since the middle of March
I’m not surprised you like this cover so much – it’s such a bright cheery one. Those splatters echo the white highlights in your Printemps beautifully (actually it must be the other way round). Another instance of how a busy background works with a busy image (it must be something to do with Alice Style I reckon).
hahaha! Alice style – I like it!