'Poor Man's Gesso'

As is wont to happen when I do a project I can get sidetracked. As I started on the preliminaries of my Queen of Hearts project, I decided to make my own cardstock (or could be called 'poor woman's cardstock' - which really my motivation is to both repurpose a cracker box and have more coinage for emptying out the gold leaf aisle at Micheals this week).

While using this crackerbox I realized it needed a basecoat and as most artists I instinctively reached for my trusty bottle of gesso. As I did this I remembered during some research of paper mache a book had called (VOC free) White Latex paint 'The Poor Man's Gesso'. This is from an older book hence the somewhat chauvinistic slant to their namesake of this.

I like it! It is great and I am going to take my gesso bottle and refill with a bit of low voc white latex paint that always seems to be lurking in my garage.