tranquility

 I fell in love with this Clarity Stamp stencil, and couldn't resist trying it out with the large stamp from the Chocolate Baroque tranquility stamp set, especially as the bullrushes sort of match!
The stencil is a 7"x7" two-part one, with an inner and an outer, and I used both - admittedly, the outer one was just to show the space I had to stamp in. I lightly pencilled round the inside of the frame on a 6"x6" piece of white card before removing the outer stencil and stamping the figure. I wanted a dreamy misty look, so used versafine smoky grey to stamp with, and watercolour pencils to add some colour to the statue. I was trying to get the effect of moss and lichen on an old statue. The background was sponged with distress inks, mainly broken china and peeled paint, and some foliage from the same set was added at the top. I then tried to match up the inner stencil over the stamped image and sponged round it with a mix of forest moss, tea dye and chipped sapphire inks - forest moss seems to have come out as the dominant colour, but the others are there.
A simple mat of green card before mounting onto a
white 8"x8" card blank.
The second version uses the same sizes, this time with a cream base card. This time I reversed the stencil and twisted it around so that the bullrushes matched better with the stamp, and stamped the image with butterscotch adirondack ink. I coloured the image with the same ink using a waterbrush and added touches of peeled paint distress ink, a more definite image and more resembling stone.
Background with distress inks in tumbled glass, peeled paint and faded jeans using inkduster brushes and the traditional torn copy paper.
The stencil was sponged round with tea dye ink for the bullrushes and forest moss for the rest, this time dragging some of the ink to the edges of the card.
Mounts were dull gold and green, card blank is a cream pearlescent - wording is a Penny Black stamp I found when rummaging in a sale bin at the last Thetford show, a bargain at 50p!