Maria's Workshop cards

I have been getting out and about to crafting days this year, and I have joined Maria Simms'  regular workshops once a month.  They are a lovely mixture of things I have already played with and things that are new to me, a perfect mixture as far as I am concerned.  Maria is an excellent teacher and part of the Clarity Stamp team.  The rest of the group are so friendly and cheerful.  You don't have to worry if you have forgotten something, everyone works together and shares where possible.

 This is one of the cards from Maria Simms workshop in May, which I have finally put together.  It has been tucked away in my folder for a month while I got stuck into the ATCs.  It is a mixture of acrylic paints on the Gelli plate for the background, using the Treescape and Sunshine stencils.  The stamps are from the Garden Bird (Blue Tits) set and the sentiment from Maya Angelou.

This is the first of the four projects from this month, using the same Garden Bird set and one of the Cherry Blossom branches.  It is a perfect mix of stamps and they just work so well together.  The shading round the edge is Adirondack Butterscotch brayered on.  I used Archival black for the stamps as I was colouring in with pencil crayons, my lovely Derwent Coloursoft, which blend so beautifully.

 

I cannot decide which is my favourite from this month's batch, but I do love this one.   Maria had spent hours die cutting the trellis for each of us.  The colouring underneath was brayered again using the Butterscotch, and the stamping was again with the Archival black so that I could colour with the Coloursoft pencils.  The branch was stamped and coloured before adding the trellis, and the bird was stamped, coloured and then cut out before gluing it into place.  Like most people, I have coloured in for years, but I did learn one or two new tips from Maria about more advanced technique.

This was where I discovered that I had not got the Journal set, but Barbara Lancaster kindly lent hers to us to use for the script at the bottom.   This time the large bird was stamped with Archival black and then had angelina ironed on to it to give the most beautiful iridescence.  The blue ribbon and the bird were attached with the extra strong adhesive tape (the one with the red covering).  I do love the effect of the angelina and photographs really do not do justice to the effect.

The final project of the day was very similar to the ATCs I have already shown you before, and used mica powders and gilding flakes on the double sided adhesive sheets.

I think these cards show that a set of stamps can be used in several different ways so that you can get the maximum mileage from them.