Parchment - I love it

If you have seen any of my posts on Facebook, you will know by now that I am totally hooked on parchment at the moment.  It is not a new style for me.  I do not consider myself an expert but I have done a fair bit over the last few years.  Sadly, there do not seem to be any parchment classes anywhere within a reasonable distance, so all that I have learned has been from watching people like Christine Coleman and Tina Cox on Create and Craft, and from YouTube videos, and books etc.

Then Barbara Gray of Clarity Stamps picked up an idea from Maria Simms, and developed a revolutionary system for parchment called the Groovi Plate.  If you want to have a look at it, you will find it here -  http://www.claritystamp.co.uk/Groovi

Several people told me that it would be not good for me, I did not need it as I already did parching.  That idea was so wrong.  I have had a ball with the Groovi system and it has given me loads more ideas that I can play with.  Having been to a whole day workshop with Maria Simms, doing nothing but the Groovi plate, I was even more impressed to see that, no matter what level you are, you can come out at the end with beautiful pieces of work.  Even experienced parchers have really enjoyed using this kit and found uses for it.

This is my latest piece of parchment work, which is a mix of Groovi work, conversion of stamps into parchment.  The trellis and the grasses are done using the Groovi system, while the Blue Tit is a popular Clarity Stamp.

I stamped the bird onto a piece of tracing paper, which I could then flip over and then transfer to the piece of parchment, then added the trellis work around it.  The grasses are on a separate piece of parchment behind the trellis.  I used my ball tools to do the white work and emboss the grasses and the bird.  The colour was added with a combination of Derwent and Spectrum Noir pencils on the reverse of the parchment.  I did repeat the bird to decoupage it on the top of the flat image below.

Then I went through my stash of mop up pieces to find a good background which would show up the parchment best.  (Mop up pieces are created when you spritz the mixture of inks on your blending mat and then swish a piece of card around to pick up what it left - they are all different)  I trimmed the first one to fit the parchment and then found another to tone with it before sticking the whole thing together with brads.

 

I then decided to attach it all to one of the canvas boards which I had used for something else.  After sticking it irrevocably, I decided the colour of the canvas was definitely not right.  Fortunately, I had some new Fresco chalk paints in front of me and this blue turned out to be just what I wanted to pick up the blue in the mop up background.

The final stage was to find another colour to mount the whole thing on, which turned out to be another Fresco chalk paint.

Amazingly, by taking this to show my daughter today, I ended up with a commission from her neighbour to do something along the same lines.  Very gratifying to find that someone would like to buy something you have created.

This is a much better photo taken today on a proper camera.