This is the first card I have done for a while for Craft A Scene and it is good to get back to the DT. The theme for September is "Dusk to Dawn".
As those of you who read my blog will know, I am a big fan of Barbara Gray and Clarity Stamps, and this card owes a great deal to the recent one day workshop I attended with Barbara, and is, indeed, based on one of the projects we did on that day. To fit the theme, I darkened the whole thing and put in more clouds.
Ingredients:
Clarity Stamps - Castle, bridge, Letterbox Kit, Scots Pine tree (remove the blue "indexing" with nail varnish remover, otherwise you are likely to mess up your clean Versamark)
A5 Clarity silk art card (the shiny stuff)
Adirondack ink pads - Juniper, Denim, Mountain Rose, Black
Versamark ink pas
SplodgeAway Mat
Promarkers - Black, Ivory
Torn copy paper
Brayer
Make-up sponge
Cotton wool
- The first stage is to create the reflection for the castle and the bridge. That is achieved by inking up the two stamps and stamping them onto the SplodgeAway mat. Then take the silk art card and lay it carefully over the top, making sure that your image will be roughly in the centre of the card.
- Then turn the card round and stamp in the castle and bridge to match the reflection - the see through stamps are what makes that possible.
- Stamp in the Scots Pine trees at the bottom.
- Stamp the letterbox squares onto the sticky end of a post it note and cut them out, cutting them on the inside of the line (this helps to avoid the "halo" effect)
- Stamp your letters into the boxes (check your spelling before you stamp), allow them to dry and mask them with the post it masks.
- Place two small moon masks (post it notes), one in the sky and one to line up in the water.
- Once the ink is dry, take some cotton wool and tease it out into wispy cloud shapes and press them into the Versamark with copy paper (helps to keep your hands clean). Then place your "clouds" as you wish on your picture and place a piece of clean copy paper on top. Using your brayer, burnish over the top to make sure the Versamark comes through onto the card.
- Shield the water area of your card with a piece of clean copy paper, and then brayer across the whole sky area with Juniper. Then ink up the brayer with Denim, making sure that the leading edge is clean of ink and start brayering from the corner you want to be darker. Continue with this until you get the shading you are after. I also added a little Mountain Rose to change the colour a little. At this stage, the clouds will be invisible.
- Then move your copy paper to cover the sky and land area, and cover the water area with Juniper.
- Take a piece of copy paper and screw it up totally - the more creases the better. Load the brayer with Denim and run it across the opened up paper ONCE only. Then run it straight across the water area ONCE only.
- Tear another piece of copy paper to form hill shapes and using a make up sponge, in a mushroom shape, add just enough colour (Denim and a hint of Black) to suggest hills, in the background and also in the water.
- Remove the moon masks and with a hint of Denim, drag the make-up sponge across the moons to give a suggestion of mist and cloudiness.
- With the Ivory Promarker, colour in the castle and bridge.
- Before removing the masks from the letters, use your sponge to drag a hint of Denim and Black to suggest a shadow around them.
- Remove all masks and blot the whole picture to make sure the ink is completely dry.
- Then take a piece of kitchen roll and polish the whole picture to a high gloss. As you polish, your clouds should pop out like magic.
- Once that has been done, trim your work as you wish. Then you can use your black Promarker to fill in any tiny imperfections in your stamping, if required, and add a black edge to the whole picture, before mounting it.
I hope this all makes sense to you. I learned loads from doing it with Barbara at the workshop, and you will probably find that you will need a couple of goes to get it just as you want. If you look at my water, you will see that I have one or two vertical lines. That is because when I was inking up the brayer, I failed to check that the ink was evenly spread across the roller and missed the line that was darker. I did not take enough time and care. Don't worry about making mistakes - you learn far more from your mistakes than if it is perfect first time.
One important thing to remember when you are using this shiny card is to blot your stamp gently on copy paper when you have inked it up. If you forget, not only does the ink take longer to dry, but you stand a good chance of the stamp slipping as you press it down, and you will not end up with the sharp crisp image you are after. You also need to blot your stamp before stamping the reflection on to the SplodgeAway mat for the same reason - a little smudging here is acceptable as reflections are seldom crisp. Have a go and enjoy the playing. Then, don't forget to create your own scene for this month's challenge. I look forward to seeing how you interpret the theme.