Splodge mat again - I love it

I am having a great time at the moment, playing with the brayer and my new Splodge mat.  The mat is so good at saving inks and allowing the brayer to produce much better blending.  I spoke in my last post about leaving the ink on the mat overnight and being able to use it again in the morning.  This is exactly what I did on this card, and the inks were perfectly useable, just as if they had come straight from the ink pad.

Recipe:-

Clarity silk card

Clarity silk paper

Adirondack ink pads - Juniper, Cloudy Blue, Stonewashed, and Pitch Black

Big and Juicy - one with a good sun yellow in it.

Clarity stamps - Small Village Set, tree from Cottage Set

Digi "stamp" of church

 Limited palette of Promarkers

Kitchen roll

cling film

Speedball brayer

moon mask punched from a post it note

I needed a stamp of a church and was quite shocked to find I had not got one anywhere, so I managed to borrow the large church stamp made by Clarity (I have now ordered my own).  I stamped it onto good white card, scanned it into the computer, and reduced the size digitally to get one that would go with the mini village set.  I had to work out exactly where I wanted it on the card before printing it onto the Clarity silk card, and leaving it overnight to dry thoroughly.  Then I just needed to place all the other images where they looked good (I did try it all on copy paper first).

I loaded the brayer with Cloudy Blue and with the moon mask in place, put the sky in.  Then I darkened it slightly by changing to Stonewashed and repeating it.  The hills and mounds were done using a randomly torn piece of paper, and a make up sponge to apply the Juniper, trying to ground the church, the trees and cottages as I went.   I removed the mask and added a little yellow to the sun with a sponge.

Once the ink was totally dry, I added a little colour with Promarkers, keeping to a very limited palette of colours.  The edge was done with a ruler, upside down, and a Slate Promarker.

The backing paper was created with the brayer, Juniper and Stonewashed.  I added two stripes, overlapping and random to a piece of Clarity silk paper.  Then all I needed was to get a large piece of cling film, spraying it with a mister and scrunching it down (wet side down) on to the inked paper, scrunching it round a little to blend the stripes.  Then it went on another surface to dry naturally (That surface was another pile of things to sort out - not the clear tidy cupboard it should have been).  After that, both the topper and the backing paper had a good polish up with a piece of dry kitchen roll to bring up the shine, before mounting it all on a plain white card.

Like most of my cards I can see loads of ways to improve this card, but it is all part of a leaving curve, and good fun.  Hope you like it, and if you want to see the expert at these techniques, just watch Barbara Gray - she is a legend.