faux chalkboard

 Faux chalkboard is this month's technique on Techniquetime Tuesday - one I saw quite a bit of a few months ago, but never got around to trying until last week.
The first card is following Mynette's video instructions (just to prove I can do as I am told) using my new raindrops stamp by Ryn, and a dirt cheap clear stamp I found in Hobbycraft on Saturday while waiting for the queue at the hairdressers to reduce to sensible proportions. Considering the weather we have had recently, thought this combination was quite apppropriate...................                                            
Moira and Janet can now relax, as I then reverted to normal and started playing around (didn't last long, did it?)
The next two both had the raindrops background again , this time on grey card - you can tell I like this stamp - and sneak peeks of 2 new sets from Stampin Up. the small flower border across the base is from Best of Flowers and the flower and sentiment from Simply Sketched, which is a new hostess set.

After stamping the raindrops and the border, I stamped the flower 3 times, using a post-it note mask and embossed with white EP. Then I went off-course and painted the flowers with a waterbrush and white Stazon reinker, gave it a quick blast with a heat gun to stop it smudging and left it overnight to dry properly. The next day I painted the flowers with a waterbrush again and primrose petals and raspberry ripple SU inks, with a bit of green marker pen on the stalks.

One I just mounted straight onto a raspberry base card, the other I cut out using a topnote Sizzix die.

water stamping

 Techniquetime Tuesday features water stamping this month, and I tried this with the new Sheena stamp 'ancient arches' - it is really far too detailed a stamp, but I thought that I might be able to get a moonlit impression..............didn't really work though!
These two cards are using later efforts, but I still had to overstamp the image to get a decent effect, not sure if that is strictly within the challenge though! Top one used SU inks in not quite navy and midnight muse, and although the image came out best on this one, I missed 'inking' part of the stamp with the water.
The lower one used distress inks tumbled glass, broken china and faded jeans, and had the best water impression of the lot, just the background colour wasn't dark enough. I quite liked the faded effect, and over stamped it without reinking, so got a muted grey second image.







The third card actually uses the first image I made, and the final effect is actually closest to what I was aiming for - you just can't see the water stamping bit...............I inked up the card with distress inks as in the second card, but adding chipped sapphire and black soot where I hoped the darker parts of the image would be when it was stamped. It worked quite well, only trouble was that the black soot was far too overpowering, and it just didn't look right.

Miraculously, when I over stamped it in black versafine, the two images almost completely matched up and the black bits were in just the right places - - and I got almost exactly the effect I was looking for.