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.

blue and brown

The challenge this week on Make my Monday is to use blue and brown, which fitted in quite nicely as I wanted to have another go at this technique, that I came across in blogland a while ago- can't find it now, so if anyone knows, please tell me and I will add the link.
 Found it!
http://stampwithamyk.com/2013/02/22/white-embossed-secret-garden-birthday-card/
The  kraft base card is 6x6, and the large flower stamp from the SUI Everything Eleanor set was stamped in versamark and embossed with white EP 4 times using masks. the flourish from the same set was stamped in versamark and embossed with gold EP over the masks, and the small leaves from Just believe were inked with green marker.
The flowers were painted using a waterbrush and SU reinker in craft white, which was given a quick burst with a heat gun then left to dry properly overnight. Flowers were then painted with the waterbrush using ink from midnight muse and not quite navy inkpads, picked up directly from the pads.

April quintiles

 April's theme is April Fool - which absolutely floored me, until several people said that they had used jester or mask stamps. I don't have any of  these, so decided to just cut a mask shape out of black card and stamp a rather baroque floral stamp over it and emboss with gold EP. Then I needed a background - desperation ruled again, and I dug out my TH distress stains and very ancient Ranger Posh Rainbow inks. For the blue one I mainly used the distress stains in gold, brass, bronze and picket fence - the pinker one had a lot of the rainbow inks added and some fired brick distress paint as well round the edges- just splodged over the card and heavily spritzed with water. I wasn't sure if the inks would react horribly with the distress stains, but they didn't.

They looked ok, but a little plain when they eventually dried - then I remembered that I had some TH tissue wrap untouched in the packet, so dug that out and glued over the card using some aqua glass varnish from an old Graphicus lucky dip box (also previously untouched!). This stuff was originally for serviette technique, according to the label - worked fine on tissue wrap, and made a much more subtle background from my splodges.
Am not too happy with these, so will hang on to them for a couple of days, just in case inspiration strikes - you never know what may surface from the combined process of clearing out the rubbish and finally putting workshop stuff away!

pan pastels and clarity stamp

This is one of the cards made today at Moira's - original design by Janet (and using her pastels and stamp!)
Janet is a firm devotee of pan pastels, and is working very hard on trying to convert me............I do have to admit that they do blend beautifully, and are far less messy than my old (virtually untouched) pastels - the price makes me reel with horror though!
The pastel background was on white linen-finish card, sprayed with fixative before stamping the Clarity stamp of cherry blossom  using versamark and Crafty Notions black/silver EP - a new brand to me in EP, and a very nice black. The blossoms were painted using a Stampin up craft white re-inker and a waterbrush - will try to find the link to this technique later.
Butterflies were cut using Spellbinders dies, with brads to hold them together and onto the card. Matted onto black  card, then onto A5 white pearlescent base card .
The second card needs to be photographed, once I have replaced the batteries in my camera - to be honest, this one would have been better photographed............

make a background

I finished this card yesterday, and struck lucky today with the new
  Make my Monday challenge, which is to create a background. This is something that is quite addictive, and I often take longer making the background than the rest of the card - meanwhile  a pile of dsp paper remains relatively untouched..........
All the stamps used here are from Stampin up, and the card was originally created as a sample for a craft day with a local WI.
Background started out as white card, and I used almost all of the stamps from the Gently falling set of leafy stamps to create it. the stamps were all inked with marker pens so that I could have 2 or 2 colours on the one stamp easily and randomly stamped over the sheet. I used all the green markers I had, also 2 blues and a coral - the intention was to create an autumn background, but it came out more summery..................
The main image is the big swallowtail butterfly, just stamped with versamark and embossed with black EP