Thursday Tips and Techniques - why does my white work look lumpy and bobbly?

There are a number of questions that I see time and time again on Groovi Worldwide and other websites.  One very frequent query is "why won't my parchment lie flat?" , put together with "why is my white work lumpy?"

The first answer is that parchment is supposed to be relaxing, and not to be rushed.  It is easy when you start a new craft of occupation of any kind to want to get it done and mounted immediately.  If you want to do that, that is fine, but limit yourself to tracing your design with some careful colouring.  That way, you will have a lovely piece of work in a few minutes.  To keep this lying flat, use the Groovi Guard to rest your hand on and stop the natural moisture and oils in your skin (everyone has them) from getting on to your parchment.

If you want to take your parchment work further and learn to do gridwork and hits work then you really need to learn patience first.  Most people have several pieces of work on the go at the same time, so that by the end of a week you could end up with five or six completed pieces finished.  

This photo is designed to show how to emboss.  The two very white flowers were done in the wrong way by really going for it by using heavy pressure and trying to get it very white in one go.  The photo does not really show how bad the embossing is, but it is lumpy, bumpy and close to cracking.  

The flowers numbered 1 - 5 have been done properly.  

Flower 1 has been softly stroked once.  

Flower 2 -5 rested overnight before being stroked again.  

Flowers 3 - 5 rested overnight again before being gently embossed again.  

Flowers 4 - 5 rested overnight before being embossed again.

Flower 5 has had at least two more periods of rest and embossing and really could do with more attention.

Even though it has been worked so many times, the parchment is still lying flat because it has been treated gently and given plenty of time to rest.  Everything you do with parchment should be done gently and slowly.  If you are colouring, do it in several light gentle layers rather than one hard layer.  If you colour softly, you get the chance to add lots more layers to intensify the colour.  If you colour hard to start with, you will find that you cannot add more.  

If you get a piece of parchment and draw two rows of similar flowers - I drew these free hand.  On one row, get your embossing tool and emboss the first flower really hard so that the parchment starts to stand up high.  Then do what I did with the other five flowers to end up with the five different stages.  On the second row, colour the first flower by really pressing hard to get as much colour down at once.    Then colour the other five flowers softly, giving then the rest overnight before adding more colour.  Once you have done these two rows of flowers and keep them in a folder for future reference.

Take care and enjoy playing and learning.