Painted Dish Soap Dispenser /Sponge Background

Make My Monday's challenge this week is to create your own background. I love this kind of challenge.  To create my background, I grabbed three different shades of blue acrylic paint, a dish soap dispenser/ sponge and some cardstock. This particular sponge surface has a mesh covering, which I thought would create an interesting texture. Using one shade of blue at a time, I spread the paint directly from the tube right onto the sponge surface then pressed it randomly onto the white cardstock. I repeated this with each shade of blue. I set it aside to dry and cut banners from white cardstock. I also cut a dark blue strip and edged it with a border punch. After the paint had dried on the newly created background cardstock, I cut a panel to fit the front of a cardbase and added the blue strip. It looked a bit flat, so I ran it through a paper crimper before adhering it to the cardbase. Next, I used the excess background cardstock to punch flowers. I also punched flowers from white cardstock and layered them together adhering a blue center on each set of flowers. Using the dark blue carstock, I punched leaves and adhered them to the flowers. With a marker, I added faux stitch lines around two of the banners. On the center banner I inked the edges, than layered the banners and flowers onto the background.

A close up of the mesh covering the sponge.

This was a great challenge and I loved that I was able to put my tubes of acrylic paint to good use.

This is the dish soap/sponge dispenser I used.

Supplies:
Cardbase: Paper Studios, Cardstock: Recollections (white), Dish soap/sponge dispenser, Bazzill (blue), Punches: Stampin' UP, McGill, EK Success,Crimper: Marvy Uchida, Acrylic Paint, Master's Touch, Ink: Studio G, Marker: Zig, Adhesive: Scotch Quick Dry, Scotch ATG,