Scrapbooking is a great way to keep yourself busy while enhancing your skills and
ideas. If you have a few skills that you are good at, maybe now is the time to try
out something new such as dry brushing.
Let’s explore what dry brushing is all about. You may have seen breath taking scenes
where the color composition is perfect and soothing on the eyes. This is the same
effect we will try to create when we use the dry brushing technique on our scrapbook
layouts.
There maybe times when your scrapbook layout looks just fine in its structure and
color combination but a bit low on liveliness because the colors blend together
on the layout to give you a whole picture rather than draw your attention to one
particular spot. So if you want to highlight a certain area to give it a special
look, the best thing you could do is to use the dry brushing technique.
So here are the steps for dry brushing:
Get hold of a scrapbook layout where you have already embellished the background
and have also added a photograph. Supposing that you want to highlight the photograph,
we will use the dry brushing technique here.
Step one: Get hold of a medium sized paint brush. (1 inch wide paint brush
would be ideal)
Step two: Make sure the paint brush is completely dry. Now dip the edges
of the bristles in to an acrylic PVA paint. (Be careful about the color of paint
to use. For example, if your scrapbook layout has shades of green, select an acrylic
paint that is either yellow, orange or red)
Step three: Now dab the brush on to a piece of paper, tissue or towel to
get rid of the any excess paint.
Step four: Next, using strong and confident strokes, sweep the brush on the
outer boarder of the photograph to add a rough edge effect to your photograph. If
you see the brush marks showing through the paint, don’t panic as this is exactly
the expected outcome that we want to achieve using dry brushing.
Step five: Allow the paint to dry and repeat the process to every other place
that you want to highlight.
It is also a good idea to use two or more colors together for dry brushing to come
up with a bright effect. To achieve this, simply pour little amounts of acrylic
paint of different colors on to a rough surface. Now using the earlier method, dip
the brush slightly through each color. Make sure not to make the brush too heavy
with paint. Next, dab the brush on a towel or piece of paper to get rid of the excess
paint and sweep around your photographs as before. The end result would be a mixture
of colors composed naturally to give off a bright effect.
The colors you choose to mix are also very important in this process. Don’t ever
mix red and purple because it will give off black; unless otherwise you intentionally
want to dry brush with black! So mess around with colors creatively and feel the
difference it would add to your scrapbook layout. Good luck!
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