February postcards

 The challenge for this month over at Chocolate Baroque was either violets or the colour lilac - not having any violet stamps, that meant the colour again. I'm none too sure that these even vaguely class as lilac, but the ink pads were the nearest I had, and I'm sure I have seen lilac growing in different shades of purple - that's my excuse, anyway!
I was a bit stuck for ideas too, then came across one of the Paris sets of stamps, and thought that might go - city of romance etc and valentines day in February............
The top one was one of the first efforts, using a piece of brusho'd card , very roughly overstamped with a stamp from gothic fragments.  I used a stencil of Paris found at the recent Thetford papercraft show with dusty concord ink over that, then added the image of Notre Dame stamped in black versafine on white card, coloured with victorian velvet ink and cut out. I darkened the stencilled birds with black soot as I didn't think they stood out enough.
I felt that this was a bit on the dark side, so tried to get a lighter effect with later efforts.
The second one was sponged with victorian velvet ink first, then the same stamp from gothic fragments in milled lavender. . The stamp and stencil were again in dusty concord, which was also sponged around the images.

Friends

 Friends is appropriate, as it is not only applies to  the sentiment but to Moira and Janet who provided the inspiration and the stamps!
The first card is loosely based on two cards Moira did for her workshop yesterday - Janet has blogged her versions here, so you can see the differences!
I used 3 different sizes of the Spellbinders peony dies to cut the aperture masks just to see if |I could make more of an arrangement of flowers rather than single ones. Did work, but got very fiddly using both  the apertures and the diecut shapes as masks.
Background done with distress inks in peacock feathers and picked raspberry  - Moira's version of the bleeding tissue technique for this involved lots of water and kitchen roll, and definitely needed bright ink colours to start with, subtle just doesn't work.
 Distress inks brushed and sponged through the masks, mostly using spiced marmalade and fired brick, leaf shape mask cut by hand and sponged with peeled paint ink. The stamps are by Hobby Art, using archival black for the flower centres and peeled paint for the swirls. Card cut down to 5.5" square and matted onto nearest pink card I could find to the background colour, then onto a 6x6" square white card blank.

Janet had been playing with the bokeh technique, using pan pastels and a Clarity moon mask set. My version used distress inks in wild honey, spiced marmalade and fired brick, with the white circles in brilliance moonlight white. Greeting is a Claritystamp, stamped on vellum using archival black - vellum secured on the back of the inked strip using redline tape, and the brad holding the paper flowers together goes through both the vellum and the card as well. Flowers were white, inked with spiced marmalade distress ink and impress chocolate. Matt is orange card, card blank is 5"x7".