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.

steampunk?

The ATC swap theme over at Chocolate Baroque this month is steampunk - now this is SO definitely out of my comfort zone, and steampunk stamps are not in my   collection - though I admit to having the lovely CB  punk rose on the wish list - so I was somewhat stumped as to what to do. Thanks to the lovely ladies on the Wednesday chat session , ideas came in plenty - I ended up trying 2 of them out.
The quickest and easiest was to cover card with foil, run through an embossing folder and grunge up  - the only folder I had that approached steampunk was a Tim Holtz clocks one, so that was duly dug out. It embossed beautifully, but just didn't look right to me - definitely seemed to be something missing, so I tried again using dark grey coredinations card, which I inked and sanded down, then added a butterfly cut from the original foiled pieces using a  freebie die.                          
                              

The suggestion I liked best was simply to stamp something and grunge it up - now that I can manage! I remembered buying a set of mini stamps ages ago for the lovely tree images, and not using the rest .............I stamped the crackle and hessian texture stamps from mail art randomly across the cream card using SU crumb cake ink, overstamped with a script and the tunnel from mini scripts in early espresso ink, finally with the cyclist from curiosities in black versafine twice. A hefty smudge of vintage photo and black soot distress inks and some roughed-up edges to finish.
Not sure that either of them are really steampunk, but they're the nearest I'm going to get to it!

June quintiles

 The theme this month is 'brides' for the Chocolate Baroque quintiles - I thought this was going to be really easy, but have been struggling to get two finished!
Backgrounds used the same large stamp from the harlequin rose set, and both used the same Kaleidacolour birthstone ink pad on watercolour paper. They were both  liberally sprayed with water and glimmer mist after stamping - the first one with silver bells, second with perfect peach.
The first one uses my only CB  'bride' stamp, which is not easy to stamp cleanly due to the large expanse of skirt - I lost count of the number that ended up in the bin with a mark on the skirt despite liberal use of Qtips, baby wipes etc before stamping, to say nothing of what I considered to be very delicate application of an ink pad in the first place! Finally I decided to do some paper piecing to get round this, and after trying various bits of printed papers went for a Sizzix  embossing folder, and added glitter glue to the veil.

With time running out, I decided to make a wedding cake for the second tile, using strips of white pearlescent card and the same embossing folder again. The roses were made using the smaller flower from the Tin Holtz tattered florals die, cut with white card, edges brushed with victorian velvet distress ink before cutting and curling the flowers.

doing different

Yesterday was our monthly crafty session at Moira's, and we were all very glad of the heater glowing in the corner as it was a very dull and dank day, though it didn't actually rain.
Moira had found a new to us technique involving alcohol inks and laminating folders  - splashes of inks on the inside of the folder, add gilding flakes, close up and run through the laminator. Stamp a flower stamp with versamark and emboss with black EP on the resulting plastic sheet, flatten quickly with a block, then cut out the flowers and arrange round a diecut stamped sentiment.
Quite simple - until I tried it! Everyone else produced a perfect mixed multicoloured sheet - I got a streaky inky mess..............which looked like a rather lurid underwater scene to my rather desperate eyes. Moira produced a sheet of fish peeloffs,

 and I stuck 2 of the fish onto white card, coloured with promarkers, cut out and glued onto the more underwatery bit of the piece of plastic, along with 3 bits of waterweedy peeloff at the bottom. the fish was coated with dazzling diamonds, which I later regretted, as they took ages to dry........
the card on the right is more what I should have done .
I dug out my inks when I got home - or rather the 4 that I could find - a laminating folder and got going. I added mica powders as well as gilding flakes - it took 3 tries with different laminating sheets to get something approaching a decent result - obviously some makes work better than others, as on 2 of them the inks just slid off the plastic. I used an orphan Chocolate Baroque stamp for the flower, and the EP is a mix of odds and ends of blue and green - sentiment is a Clarity stamp of Moira's. Base card is white pearlescent, mat is vanilla, which doesn't show up too well on the scan, as I had to adjust the colours to get the flowers to look reasonably true.                                                            

 The remaining 2 cards did come out rather more as they should have - apart from me using white EP on grey card rather than black on white card, with the addition of white craft ink on the second card.
Sorry for the squiffy scans, I gave up after I had carefully lined them up with the edge of the scanner 5 times and still got a crooked image............
allium stamp is another Clarity one.
Moira promised to blog her originals soon, so I will be able to see how different my home version turned out.............it's not a technique I will be using a lot, it took ages to clean the rollers of the laminator!