Faux Verdigris or Patina Background

Uh oh – I think I’m in love with another technique!  You’ve all seen me use salt on projects before to achieve unique patterns, well today I’m using it to add a pattern and texture to make a faux copper verdigris patina created with Lindy’s Stamp Gang Products.  I think I’ve hit the product combination spot on to create a realistic faux version of verdigris – have a look and let me know what you all think – did I get it right?

In case you’re not familiar with it, Verdigris looks a little like this, you’ve probably seen it around…

or this

Well this is what mine looks like….

What I used:

• Lindy’s Stamp Gang Products:
  Starbursts: Cattail Copper Brown,   Delphinium Turquoise, Tibetan Poppy Teal and Teeth Chattering Teal
  Flat Fabio: Toto’s Tornado Black
• Salt – both Table salt and the larger Rock Salt crystals
• Plain white cardstock
• Plastic eye dropper or pipette
• Water
• Flat plastic tray / marbling tray

What I did:

1. Cut card to size and lay in a flat tray (yes you need to cut it first in most cases).
2. Spray generously with Cattail Copper Brown until card is covered, no white showing.

   

3. Add larger rock salt crystals and then sprinkle the finer table salt in patterns to mimic veins in rock, then spray with more Cattail Copper to build up the shimmer.

   

4. Add drips of the Teeth Chattering Teal (which is an opaque white based spray), by both spraying and adding drips on top of the Cattail copper

   

5. Spray the Delphinium Turquoise on top of the white and let the colours mix a bit.

   

6. Using eye dropper add concentrated drips of Tibetan Poppy Teal and disperse any that are too eye catching with water

   

7. Splatter on some of the Toto’s Tornado Black

   

8. Leave to air dry overnight for best effects.
9. Vigorously brush salt crystals off with fingers (you can leave a few of the smaller ones on there if you like) and your background is ready to use.  Please note – not all of the salt can be removed, some will have dissolved and reformed within the paper, so don’t be too worried if there is some salt remaining – this just adds extra texture – just remove the loose bits.
   

   

I hope you like this idea – I adore the colours and how these turned out to be so natural and organic looking.  Now if you are wondering what to do with these backgrounds now, you could use it on a card or die cut elements to embellish your art – I’ve done both on the card below.

So what do you think, how did I do at recreating the look of verdigris or patina?

May your day sparkle, and don’t forget to check out the clip of this background being created over on our YouTube channel!  

Kate