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".

just playing

 I started to do some long-awaited clearing up after the family had all gone, and of course found lots of interesting bits - end of clearing up!
I found a heap of brusho backgrounds that had been partly used, and couldn't bear to junk them. So I tried out the bokeh technique I saw on Rae Dalal's blog  on a couple of pieces, using  white pigment ink from Stampin Up - the ink didn't stay as white as I would have liked, but did give an interesting effect, probably helped by the brusho coming off on the foam pad I was using!








The stamp is from Hobby Art, bought before Christmas and not used until now, stamped onto more bits of brushoed card - I did colour the leaves and stems in with promarker, left the flowers as they were. Cut out with Sizzix dies from Stampin Up , then just matted and layered onto 6x6 white card blanks.

Very similar card here, no matts this time, image cut out using a Spellbinder die, edged using tarnished brass distress stain as my ancient krylon pen had dried up.
I did add some more colour to the flower using a marker pen and a clear Wink of Stella pen, and coloured the leaves and stem the same way.

These actually fit some challenges this week, so am linking them to
Pixie snippets
make my Monday - bright & cheerful
Hobby art - bright & happy