Chunky Time

We just finished a swap on the Everything Wendy Vecchi Yahoo Group of Chunky ATCs and this is the chunky I made and sent to Susan.  I received an incredible chunky from Anita.  She has pics on her blog Here and also another somewhat similar chunky on her blog Here that is awesome.  

If you don't already know, a chunky starts as a piece of 2 x 4 wood cut to 2 1/2".  A 2x4 is actually only 3 1/2" wide and 1 1/2" thick so by cutting a piece at 2 1/2" you get a piece that is ATC sized and 1 1/2" thick; therefore, a chunky.  Our only requirement was to use at least one Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 stamp but I used many.  I also got my order of Wendy's new stencils and some of her stamps and art parts in time to to use them on my chunky.  So all stamps and stencils used are Studio 490.  

I started out by painting all sides of wood with Distress Crackle Paint weathered wood and broken china... I just poured some each onto my craft sheet and picked up the colors randomly letting them swirl together on the wood.  Once everything else was done to it you can't really see how they swirl together but I'm sure it must have made a different in my finished project :-))  After it was dry and crackled I stamped with the background image from the set Material Art using Archival Ink Manganese Blue on all sides.  Next I brushed watered down snow cap Paint Dabber over a side, let it sit just a few seconds and wiped it off, and then continued until all sides were done.  This toned down the stamped a bit and emphasized the cracks more.  Along the way I did some pieces flake off here and there but not too much and it just added to the distress of it all.  I stenciled dots on the front and back with purple twilight Paint Dabber.  Around the top edge I stenciled on the stripes with espresso Paint Dabber... it sometimes bled under the stencil but that was ok too... and then I used a white pen to bring out the design more.   

The bird nest is just wadded up raffia.  I also sprayed a little brown Dylusions on it, blotted it and let it dry.  The bird is cut from grungeboard - I cut 2 and glued them together.  

The big flowers on the front and back are modeling paste through a stencil, let it dry, colored roughly with Tombow markers and then blended with water, let it dry, put the stencil back on and stamp the flower with a background image.  The center pieces are a couple of Wendy's Blossom Bucket pieces, the colors altered with Sharpie watercolor paint markers (one with regular color and the other with glitter color).  

The flower on this side is an Art Part and matching stamp.

The leaves and flowers were stamped on grungepaper, cut out, inked, leaves stamped with a background image, leaves and flowers highlighted with a white pen.  

The piece around the bottom is Ranger's sticky backed foil cut with a Tim die, colored with alcohol ink, and then coated with matte Glue 'n Seal to tone down the shininess.