Rusty Patina Effect double the pleasure

Here is how I got the cool rusty effect on the egg - loving this right now and can think of all kinds of things I can do with this effect.

Step 1
Paint your first layer of red, red-brown, or dark orange on the embellishment.  Your paint consistency has to be quite liquidy so that it soaks into the paper or cardstock - I used grungeboard.  For this layer I used a combination of Ink and Paint - I mixed the ink in to give it more liquid pigment, so that it would saturate nicely.  If you dont want to waste your precious Distress Ink - you can use regular office stamp-pad red.  These are like R5-00 a 20ml bottle (about US$ 0.50) and are super saturated.  I used Dala Drawing Inks and Dala Suncolour though because I had that on hand.  Heat with hair dryer or heat gun to speed up dry time.

Step 2
Using a variety of Distress Paint - I used Salty Ocean, Picked Raspberry, Mowed Lawn and Mustard Seed - dot randomly on craft sheet relatively close to each other. First place embellish face down down in the paint, then drag it around a little.  Dry with heat gun.  Repeat the process with the excess paint (this is just to give you more layers of colour.) - If the paint has started to dry out on the craft sheet, spritz with water to reactivate. .

Step 3
While the paint is still a little tacky or wet - sprinkle your pearl powder (or in my case mineral mica) ever so slightly over - it helps if you do this with a soft brush.  I used a combination of copper, bronze and gold.  I think I started with the gold and bronze (which had more brown pigment than red-orange, and then went all over with the red-orange copper.  If it is unevenly spread - that is okay, it adds to the effect.  Dry that with a heat gun.

Step 4
Once you are satisfied that it is dry enough - randomly sand off some bits.  Vary your sanding pressure and sand in random directions.  If you have one of those pencil-type sanding tools - those work great because you can sand pretty much exactly where you want to.  I got mine from the Manicure/Pedicure section at Dischem for about R20-00 (US$ 2-00).

Step 5
You will start to see that the the colour underneath is starting to be exposed.  If your pressure was uneven, in some places you will see a red-brown rim around the "patina" - I like that.

Step 6
You can stop here, or you can do what I did and paint a layer of high gloss Varnish over the top to seal it.  If you want it to have extra glossy dimension you can put a layer of Ranger Glossy accents over that.  That is what I did.

And there you have it - cool huh?

EDITED TO ADD:  28 MARCH 2013 - Tim Holtz has brought out a line of Metallic Distress Paint - which is really going to take the hassle out of the step with the Mineral Mica.