Scraps Of Brilliance: 13 Days With 13 Arts

Hello bloggers! I hope you've had a chance to follow along with the 13 Days With 13 Arts promotion between the Flying Unicorn and 13 Arts. If you haven't, it's not too late to start. On alternating days creative team members from Flying Unicorn and 13 Arts are preparing projects and tutorials to inspire you, and each day there is a fantastic RAK up for grabs. Keep reading for all the details on your chance to win.

It's my turn to provide some inspiration today, and I've been playing with 13 Arts' new Timeless collection. I love the colour orange, though I know it can scare some people off, and partnered with blue as it is in this collection? Perfection!

Here I've used it to capture a memory of my two year old, Colby, goofing around at a friend's pool. Because the colours in the photo are pretty neutral, I had free rein to use it with brightly-colored background papers and embellishments.

I knew I wanted to do lots of misting on the background, but found that I did not have the right orange-red colour.

Have you had a chance to play with 13 Arts mists? I love them, and my tutorial for you today is about making your mists work harder for you. How often do you have a project and turn to your mists only to find that you do not have the right colour, or that what you have is too bold? Despite my copious, and growing, mist collection, it happens to me all the time. But there's an easy solution - custom mixing your mists to achieve the colour you're after. You can combine your 13 Arts mists with each other (Pearl and Chalk can be mixed together), and even better, you can drop in some 13 Arts Water Ink (which is transparent) to give you even more possibilities.

To illustrate my point, I prepared a cheat sheet of some of the possible combinations I could make using the Water Inks, Chalk Mists and Pearl Mists I had on hand.

As you can see, some of the combinations are stunning (check out the two greens on the top row) while others were less successful (I didn't manage to get a good purple from the colours I have).

Rather than mix up a whole bunch of mist only to discover it isn't a pleasing combination, I start by mixing a couple of drops on a non-porous surface (your craft mat, for instance, or a palette; in my case I used one of the plastic cutting mats for my Big Shot) and then painting the mixture onto a piece of watercolour paper.

I chose to go with one of the bolder papers for my background, and layered on my background elements - strips of paper from the collection, canvas tape, film strip and mesh tape.

I added some misting using my custom orange-red mist through a stencil, and also stamped randomly on the page with the wet stencil.

Next I added some masking with the fabulous 13 Arts Modeling Paste. The texture of this stuff is amazing, light and whipped. For an added pop of colour I stamped with 13 Arts Water Ink in Scarlet.

I finished everything up by stamping with some of the Burnt Sienna Chalk mist and a mist cap and with flicks of Black Water Ink off a stiff-bristled brush. I also fussy cut some elements from the paper, used a sticker from the collection and created some custom embellishments with punched circles.

Here is today's gorgeous RAK, provided by Aida at 13 Arts (did I mention there is a RAK up for grabs for each of the 13 days?).

To be in the running, head over to the 13 Arts Facebook page. Like them and share the project of the day between 7am and 9pm EST and you will be entered to win.