holly spray

·   

Warning, this is a long post for the second of my guest posts, so grab a mug of coffee first! Pictures in the order I did the cards, so a bit of dodging about.............

This was the stamp I went for immediately from the Holly Bells set as I thought it would go well with brusho inks – BIG mistake! Brushos need a really bold stamp, as I discovered...................

Many  sheets of card later, I finally got an idea I thought might work – stamp the image first, emboss, then thoroughly damp the card before adding the tiniest amount of powder using a very fine brush just where I wanted it............................I really thought I’d cracked it, until the colour started spreading ....and spreading.... all over the card, and not just where I wanted it! Spraying with more water and blotting with kitchen roll finally toned down the colours, but the rest of the piece of card was a very splodgy mess.

In desperation I trimmed it down fairly close to the image, mounted it onto a red panel, then onto the white 7x7 base card, added the greeting in gold embossing powder.

Back to ‘normal’ it was, and a group of CAS cards...................

Masked off the panel towards the top of the 7x7 card blank, stamped the holly spray with black versafine and clear embossed.

Brushed scattered straw and wild honey distress inks round the image, then added a line of brown watercolour pencil  under the panel (thanks for the tip Lesley) and brushed it with a water brush then replaced the bottom piece of masking paper and added more wild honey.

Coloured the image with water-based marker pens.

Greeting from the clear stamp gold embossed along the base of the card.

Marks are on the scanner, not on the card! - I am fairly rubbish with a camera, think Ii need to hijack a better one from OH.......

A smaller version on a 6x6 card, using fired brick and forest moss distress inks, and a smaller clear greeting- for this version I used a sheet of A4 card vertically, stamping the spray several times down the card and gold embossing it . Trim to the size you want, colour the berries and leaves, then sponge distress inks around the image before mounting onto a base card and gold embossing the greeting. 

I also used this system with a sheet of card sprayed with red glimmer mist – the image was stamped in black versafine, clear embossed, berries highlighted with bleach and a gel pen, then trimmed down to fit on a 6x6 white card base.

It also worked for the brushos, once I had given up on traditional colours – I dropped blue and purple powders onto a  sheet of A4 card, sprayed heavily with water and left it to dry overnight. I then stamped the spray with versamark and white embossed it, highlighting the berries with bleach again.

This time after trimming, I mounted the panel vertically on a 6x6 white card base and stamped and gold embossed a greeting across the centre of the card.

Depending on the size of panel you want and the orientation of your card, you can get at least 4 out of a sheet of A4, so a good way to batch make cards, which is what we need to do at Christmas.

The greeting stamps are clear stamps, bold on the first two cards and mini

for the rest.