February, Craft A Scene Design Team - My Favourite Technique 2

This card is my second offering for this month as a member of the Craft A Scene Design Team.  This month's theme is Use Your favourite Technique - to produce a card that is a scene, but showing us, at the same time, how you love to work. So it is a two part challenge, your own technique but still creating a scene with a background and a foreground. 

Before I go any further with this post, I want to make it very clear that the inspiration for this card comes entirely from Barbara Gray from Clarity Stamps, and was from one of her recent blog tutorials.  If you want to see what she did, just follow this link http://barbaragrayblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/china-blue-duck.html  and you can read exactly what she did.

Mine is slightly different, partly because I did not have all the things she used, I did it on different card, and I am not as talented as Barbara is.

Ingredients

Theuva card (Clarity)

Large moon mask

Low tack masking tape

Speedball brayer

SplodgeAway mat or Claritymat

Adirondack ink pad - Juniper

Adirondack ink pad - Denim

Adirondack ink pad - Pitch Black

Clarity Stamps - Large sapling, small sapling, remountable flying duck

Copy paper

 The first thing to do is to attach the Theuva card to a piece of copy paper with the low tack tape.  It is a good idea to detack the masking tape further by sticking it to your jumper before using it on your card.  Then decide where you want your moon and place your moon mask.  If you don't have a ready made mask, cut one out of the sticky end of a post it note.

Then take a piece of cheap copy paper and tear it in half lengthways to form hill shapes.

Using the Juniper, load your brayer and spread it on the Splodge mat, ensuring that what will be the leading edge of the brayer remains free of ink.  Cover the whole piece of card with the Juniper, making sure that you lift the brayer after each pass across the card.  That helps to avoid the dreaded stripes.  return to the mat to reload the brayer, still keeping that leading edge clear of ink.

 As you can see from this picture above, the Juniper is virtually invisible, but it provides a good base for the darker ink.

Then lay down the Denim ink on the mat  by the side of the Juniper, load your brayer and start to bring it in from the top corner, reloading the brayer as you go, gradually darkening it as you go.  Then turn the artwork round, ready to work in from the bottom.  Using your brayer, work the edges of the Juniper and Denim inks together, still keeping that leading edge clean.

Holding your torn copy paper at the top of your first hill (remember that the darker one will be at the front of your picture, and the ones further back will be progressively lighter), start brayering in from the corner.

 Move your piece of paper up the card to where you want your second and lighter hill, and repeat the exercise.

 When you have finished your hills, remove the moon mask and put it away safely for another time. 

Load your large foliage tree stamp with ink from what is left on the mat and stamp it at the base of your card

 The small tree is treated the same but keeping it lighter in colour to help the perspective, and place it on another hill.  Don't worry if you don't seem to have enough difference between them  That can be sorted out later.

 Then ink up the duck direct from the ink pad and stamp it where you feel it looks best.  Barbara used the same duck but only one.  However, I had a different type of card and a larger piece and I felt that mine needed the three ducks to give balance.

 Both Barbara and I were not happy with our trees, so I followed her example and used a dark blue Promarker to tidy things up.  I also felt I did not have enough definition between the hills, so again I followed Barbara's example of using furrows using a dark promarker.

 When you remove the masking tape, make sure that you pull it gently away from the centre of the card to avoid tearing your beautiful work.  The final step was to trim the card right down to tidy it up, then mount it on another piece of Theuva card, then into a piece of dark blue pearlescent card.

 There has been a lot of people recently stealing the designs of others.  I am happy for anyone to copy what I have done, provided that they give credit to the original.  In my case, I am giving the credit fairly and squarely to Barbara Gray and thank her very much for her brilliant designs and stamps and her willingness to share her tips and techniques.  I hope you will take the time to follow the link and read her original post.

Even more do I hope that you will take the time to produce a real scenic card to enter into the Craft A Scene Challenge this month.  Take care, though.  This is my second attempt to do a card for this week.  I had intended to do an urgently needed birthday card that would also fit the brief, and suddenly realised that my birthday card was fine, but did not fit the brief of making a scene.  so that one was sent off and I started again with a tighter control over what I was doing to ensure I complied with the rules.

Clarity Stamps, a Brayer and a Splodge Away Mat - essential! And a Snippet

Two very different cards, but both using Clarity Stamps.  This first one, is fairly simple to achieve.  The background is one that I had in the box from when I used to just play with the bits left over from the paper with the excess ink from the brayer.  I liked the way this one was blended across the paper, giving a real feel of heat.  The stamps is a Clarity one, the Daydreamer, and I just stamped it direct to the background with black Adirondack.  This is my Snippet card for Pixie's Snippet Challenge for this week - all the bits came from the bits box.

The second card is a completely different kettle of fish, and took a long time to work out.  Before I started this card, my desk was tidy.  Now the entire room looks as if a bomb has gone off in there.  All the stuff I showed yesterday is still there but either buried or shoved to the left.  I had to finish this card today as it is needed tomorrow lunchtime, so tidying up was not an option.

I wanted a card very simple in style for this friend.  She definitely likes the LIM style and also likes the elegant lady type of card.  The lady is the Large Sketchy Lady from Clarity Stamps, and was the first thing to put into place.  I also had to cut myself a mask to protect this image from the rest of the card.  You may recognise the Paris skyline at the bottom, which is actually the ready cut mask from Clarity.  I had to cut the card down a bit as the Eiffel Tower would otherwise have been totally hidden by the lady, so it had to move a bit.  I used a make up sponge to apply the colours to the skyline from the Soothing Sunset Big and Juicy inkpad, keeping the colour paler on the side nearest the sun.  Once I was happy with that, I swapped the one mask for the other (with the masks from Clarity you get the innie and the outie, for the want of a better description), and used the same inkpad to brayer the background.   Then I loaded the brayer with the blue from the Waterfall Big and Juicy to brayer round the edges.

Once all the background was complete, I removed the mask from the lady and coloured her face and neck and legs with a Promarker, and a purple one for her shoes.  Then I got out something I have had around for ages and not tried - the Angelina fibre and film.   Then I had to extract the travel iron form beneath a mountain of other stuff and put it together and get it heated up - it has never been used since we bought it for the caravan years ago.  I inked up the lady with Stazon and put her onto the stand, then loaded it with two colours of fibre and film.  I did remember to put a piece of cooking parchment on top to protect the iron, then applied heat until the ink showed through all over, let it cool and removed it from the stamp.    Then I cut around her, removing the dress and the hat, all the rest going back into a bag for use on another project later.  The dress and the hat then had a bit of Pinflair glue gel on the back to attach it to the stamped image.  The only other thing was the addition of a silver peel off which I coloured with a purple Promarker to blend with the lady and the background, and I edged the card with the same Promarker.

Splodge Away Mat

Several people have asked me recently what the benefits are of using a Splodge mat, I thought I would write down the advantages I have found so far.  

I used the Splodge mat to hold the colour I wanted, which means you save a massive amount of ink and get much more control over the application.  This brilliant mat just holds the ink for you to return to as needed, and only gives as much as you need.  I used it for the sponge and definitely for the brayer work.  

It makes brayering almost foolproof, but even more important in these cash strapped days, it save on ink and paper.  No longer do you need to ink up the brayer heavily and lay most of it down on scrap paper and repeat the process several times to get the right colour level.  No wheelies either.  You just ink up the centre of the brayer, and work it well into the Splodge mat, and work your ink from there.  Instead of going back to the pad for more ink, you just return to the mat for your refill.

You can also use the mat for stamping, just inking your stamp from the ink on the mat.  Again, you get just the right amount of ink for a perfect image..  

Don't be in too much of a hurry to clean off your mat (all that needs is water and kitchen paper - never use a baby wipe).  The ink will stay usable on the mat for several days - I have left it for a week and still been able to use it successfully.

Hope this is a help to anyone who is thinking about buying a Splodge Away Mat.  I can only speak about the genuine mat, not the seemingly similar mats that have appeared since.  My feeling is always that you should try to use the best tools - they usually work out cheaper in the end, and give you the best results.

Clarity and Decoupage

Having joined most of the rest of the country in being knocked flat by the rotten flu type cold last week, I am now playing catch up with the cards I need NOW.  These are two I managed to get done yesterday (four more to do). 

This first card is for a wedding yesterday - talk about cutting it fine.  We hand delivered it yesterday morning.  The lilies of the valley stamp is a Clarity stamp, the smaller version of the one shown on Create and Craft this month.  I had thought I had the large one so I had to rethink the whole idea rather rapidly.  

I did not have the sentiment stamp, so I typed that first onto the card, and stamped the flowers round it.  I coloured them with Promarkers, and them embossed the white flowers with Detail White embossing powder.  I used my Speedball brayer and the wonderful Splodge Away Mat to "airbrush" around the edge of the topper with Adirondack butterscotch, before mounting it on brown and then gold card.

I don't often use ribbon and other bits, but this one did need extra.  I had intended to do a double bow, but I could not remember how to do that in a rush, and actually, I think it is better with just a simple single bow, and the three crystal hearts.

This second card is for friends who are moving from the middle of Sherwood Forest to the outskirts of Bridport, a very different area.

The photo in the centre is one I found ages ago, and could have been a postcard originally, but I changed it by decoupaging it.  I would probably not use photographic paper in the future as cutting it does tend to leave white edges, which are more visible in close up.  The church tower is not only curled but folded along the one edge to give it more perspective.  Gluing it in place requires different thicknesses of Pinflair glue.  I don't think you could get the right effect with sticky pads, and I have got rid of most of mine as they were just sitting there taking up more space.  

The flowers and the bees are just a part of  the Floral Corner set from Clarity Stamps.  There are other pieces in the set, a long piece which joins the corners, and three other insects, a ladybird and a dragonfly, and a caterpillar.    I coloured them with the softer colours of Promarkers and edged each corner with Powder Blue Promarker. 

I also used the ink that was left on the Splodge mat from the previous day and was still very workable to brayer around the outside of the card.  (I am going to leave the ink there for another couple of days and see how long this ink will last.  It certainly saves money using the Splodge Mat, saving ink and paper.) Then I edged the card with my Krylon gold leaf pen, and also added little highlights to the bees and some of the flower centres.  Just one tip, never try to brayer over the top of gold leaf pens or anything like that - you will probably ruin your brayer and definitely ruin your careful work. (Oh yes, I have done it, so I know from experience.)

Unfortunately, both these cards are going to need a trip to the post office, the first one because the envelope I made is a touch oversized and needs a larger package to fit, and the second one because of the depth of decoupage.  Didn't think those through very well, did I?  Oh well, I shall have to add the cost to the next mortgage to the Royal Mail.  Just had a thought - I wonder if the Queen gets her post free as it is delivered by the Royal Mail - probably not!

Sadly, there will not be any paper crafting done today.  We need some fresh bread and probably some cake too.  We also want to test out our new ice cream maker.  So it will be a different type of crafting for today.

Delayed anniversary card

As some of you may already know, Shaz Silverwolf is our daughter's mother-in-law.  She and her husband went off to Paris last week for their anniversary celebration.  I am not jealous  ... not one bit ....just rather a lot!  I spent so much time there when I was a lot younger, and have lots of good memories and so many photos.  The thought of Paris brings back smells - fresh bread,among many -and memories of friends I have not seen since I left school.  I won't tell you how long ago that was.

Anyway, back to the card.  I had already almost finished a card for Shaz and Doug before I heard where they were going.  Then I knew I had to change tack, and went hunting through all my old slides to find what I thought would go together.  Most of them date back to a trip one Easter.  A group of us from our school had joined a much larger party of people from schools all over the Midlands to the Lycee Lakanal just outside Paris.  We had lessons in the morning and then were supposed to go on organised trips in the afternoons.  We must have been most annoying to the organisers as my friends and I used to "get lost" somewhere in the Metro and go off and do our own thing.  We always turned up at the right time back at the Lycee in time for the evening meal, so in the end, they gave up trying to hang on to us.

Obviously, one of our visits was to the Tour Eiffel.  This photo is not doctored.  The light was so incredible and dramatic.  Needless to say, we had a tremendous thunder storm just after it was taken, by which time we were in the lift going to the top of the tower.  In those days, you could go higher than you are allowed now so the view was phenomenal.  

This second picture was taken looking towards the Place de la Concorde, and is showing signs of age, turning slightly mauve-ish., but I quite like the effect.  

These are the two photos I chose to work with, mounting them digitally across each other, then mounting the whole thing onto black card, and filling the rest of the border in with black Promarker and ruler.  The  background paper was created using the Splodge mat.  I used three toning colours, to reflect the colours of the photos, and blended then as I wanted on the mat, then used the brayer to transfer the colour in three blended stripes to a sheet of Clarity coated paper.  I cut a length of cling film, misted it with water and scrunched it down on the top of the coated paper, and scrunched it a bit more, left it to dry, and then buffed it up with kitchen roll.  

Once the background was dry, I moved the topper round on top to decide where it looked best, cut the paper to fit an A4 piece of white pearlescent card and glued it down with Crafters Companion Stick and Stay.  I added the topper with Pinflair glue to allow just that little extra bit of maneuverability.  To finish off, I coloured a peel-off sentiment with the Dufex pens, and added two little groups of gem hearts.  

I would suggest that you might like to slip over to Shaz's to see some of her photos and hear what she has been up to on their trip and on her return via Dover.

WOYWW - 153

My desk is a little tidier this week, mainly due to the fact that I wanted to play with mica powders today, and I did not want them mixed with everything else in sight.  You may wonder why I am showing you my desk and all that is on it.  After all, you may be new to the world of craft blogging, everyone is new at some time, and if you are, then you are very welcome.  Wednesdays are the days when our Lady Julia hosts us all at her place - Stamping Ground.  She very kindly allows us to join together and have the chance to get more inspiration from the work of others, and share our ideas and encouragement.  Some desks will terrify you and some will astound you, but you are welcome to all.  We just ask that you are patient with us and leave us a comment if you like what you see or have ideas to add.

I do have a couple of piles of projects off to the side, but not as much as usual.  Another reason for my tidy up was to find my Clarity Stamps Lovescape kit.  I knew I had it but it had got split up and distributed around my room.  You can see some of my mica powders and the brushes to applying them at the back on the right.  The little orange thing is my Fiskars finger scalpel, which is so easy to control as it becomes an extension of your finger.  My Ottlite is on show too, but as I took the photos on Tuesday afternoon, I did not need my light.  I could make do with that lovely yellow orb in the sky - I seem to remember it is called a sun, and it helps to make us warm too.  There is a small Really Useful Box at the back full of Promarker pen tops - I have changed all mine to the fine nibs, which I can remove if I really need to.  The yellow rubbish is the trimmings from the Clarity Adhesive sheets, which I used to make the two little pictures on top of the stack of white copy paper.

This is the first time I have tried this technique and it shows - I need a lot more practice to get the results I want.  I need to watch Barbara Gray a lot more to see where I am going wrong.  I think I need to take more time to mix my colours better before I start  - I never was the most patient person.  Slowly, slowly, catchee monkee, as the saying goes.  I am certainly not doing it justice at the moment.

I am off to bed now, so I shall be scheduling this post and link in properly when I get up.  I struggled to get round to all my visitors last week, and was horrendously late with some visits, for which I apologise.  I will try hard to do better this week, but please forgive me if I do not get there.    Thank you to all those who took the trouble to pop in during the week.  I really do appreciate all of you and especially what you have taken the trouble to write in your comments.

WOYWW 149 Follow on - Narrow Boats interpretation

Working Narrow Boat "Aquarius"

When you go to caravan rallies, you can have a follow on rally afterwards.  We had our usual WOYWW yesterday, so this is my follow on explanation.  A number of people gave me credit for having drawn the boat myself.  I wish!!!  I am not that talented.  So I thought I should make things clear.  I am not clever but I do enjoy manipulating images to get what I want.  That is my excuse for this post.and I am sticking to it.

For those of you who saw my canal boat card yesterday on WOYWW, I thought you might like to see the original photo from which I took my traced image to add to my Clarity stamps.

Traced and inked image of "Aquarius"

The first thing I have to tell you is that it is a narrow boat, not a barge.  If we ever slipped up and called it a barge, we got thoroughly told off.  The majority of the canal network will only take the narrow boats, and not the bigger Dutch Barge types, and some locks will only take the shorter narrow boats.

The hardest part, once the tracing was done, was to stick to what I could actually see on the photo and not to add in the things I could not see, but know are there.  For example, I know there is some beautiful sign writing on the side of the tiny living quarters, which is just not visible due to the angle of the photo.  The size of the card also limited the amount of detail that could be fitted in.
 

Traced and inked image of bridge before I reversed it

The same criteria really applied to the bridge too.  The picture I took that from was actually reversed so that the tow path was on the opposite side.  This did not fit in with using the stamp of the horse, and it was easier to reverse the bridge than to reverse the horse.  I could have been very nit picky and drawn all the bricks on the bridge, but I think that would have been too much detail for the size of the image, hence the artistic licence again and the roughly drawn huge blocks.   All bridges are numbered, as far as my limited knowledge tells me, so I chose the number of this bridge knowing that they would have travelled beneath it at some time.

Final Result (unless I decide to titivate it a bit more)

The colouring part of this card did show up the fact that I need more and varied greens, both in ink pads and Promarkers to get the real depth I wanted.  Failing that, a lot more practice in blending what I have to get the desired results.

Ingredients used:

White paper

White Centura pearl card

Copper Krylon pen

Tracing paper

Clarity Stamps - Horse, herons, bullrushes small and large (Canal barge Kit),  Geese (Small village set)

Adirondack ink pads: lettuce, cloudy blue, juniper, pitch black

Cut and Dry brush nibs

Promarkers: various

Pencil for tiny detail, like the fence on the hill and the obelisk

Brayer

Make up sponges

Pixie's Snippets Challenge 13

I have been late for everything this week, but I was determined to make it into the playground in time.  I cannot miss my go on the swings.  I will be out there to play when I have handed in my homework to Miss Pixie. 

Number one is a leftover from a sheet of Debbi Moore ladies.  The main card was sent out months ago and the oddments have been in my box since then.  I just added a bit of my lovely Martha Stewart glitter to her dress and jewels to give it a lift.  Sadly, as usual, you cannot see the glitter, but it is there.

Number two is one of a batch of toppers I printed out and took on holiday last year to colour in.  It is printed on Clarity shiny silk card, and then coloured with my very limited Promarkers.  Sometimes, when you have a small range of colours, you have to get even more creative with the way you shade.  I think I could make a better job of this one if I did it again now, but I am not going to waste this topper.  Once it was coloured and dry, I polished it with a piece of kitchen roll, then added Krylon gold leaf round the edge.  I mounted it on a piece of lilac coloured textured paper and then onto white pearlescent card.

I used the same textured paper to mat this topper.  The sparkly bits were from a kit which I bought several years ago, with lovely flowery cards, and these sparkly peeloffs and glittery borders, and metallic flowers.  all of the items were pretty in their own way, but no way did they go together, so they got put into a box to be thought about.  I had a small set of pearlescent offcuts from PDA Card, and I used some of these to mount up these peeloffs.  This one looks better in real life than it does in this picture.  The scanner seems to have changed all the colours slightly and reduced the impact of the peeloffs.


These next two are from the same set, but backed onto dark blue card (should have been black, but I only have one sheet left).  The base cards are rejects from Kanban, being badly folded so they all need some trimming to tidy them up, but they are lovely colours, and pearlescent too.

The last one is a combination of papers and techniques.  It is a floral corner stamp from Clarity, my favourite company.  Again, I printed it out, but on ordinary smooth card this time.  I think I used Promarkers again for colouring in, but I did it so long ago that I cannot remember for certain.  I did it while we were away in the caravan, so it could also have been water colour pencils or even paints.  I found it floating around today, but could not find a stamp to put into the centre, so I decided to use one of the left over tags from a card I showed you a couple of weeks ago.  Hope you like it.

Right, I am off now to finish potting up the second batch of strawberry plants and the garlic cloves in the greenhouse.  Then I will join you all in the playground.  We could play "What's the time, Mr Wolf?"  Anyone want to join me?  (Don't forget Rudolph Day tomorrow, 25th March.)

Craft a Scene

This is the first of my entries in the Craft a Scene Challenge for this month.  The title for this month is Anything Goes.  The stamps I used are from the Clarity range from Barbara Gray, and one of my first attempts at creating a scene for myself. 

I used slate grey Adirondack for the stamping, and the trees were done on the first generation ink.  The reflections of the trees were second generation ink.  The fence and the gate were drawn with a thin black pen. 

Most of the background colour was added with a make up sponge as the brayer was too big to fit in the areas I wanted.  The colouring of the oast houses and the hops were done with my limited range of Promarkers, with some blending going on. 

I edged the picture with the gold Krylon pen, before mounting it on white card.  Just a warning, the Krylon is wonderful, but do not use it on photographic paper.  It sits on the top and then flakes off, leaving a mess.  Everything else I have used it on has been fine.

My next session of crafting is intended to be a really good play with my stamps and inks to see what other scenes I can put together.  Who knows, I might get something worth showing from that., even if it is only a "what not to do" example.

WOYWW - 107

My desk this week is a real mess, but I am having a ball.  You can see lots of images in the process of being played with, my red A5 file which is developing into my stamp catalogue, and a lot of other detritus from present projects and past projects.

One of my birthday presents was the large Velvet Lady from Clarity Stamps.  Unfortunately, I still don't have the lamp post to go with her, so I had to improvise and use the one from Cute Companions - not quite right but it will do for the moment.  After all, Barbara does not say we have to copy her exactly, but if giving us ideas from which our own imaginations should take off.    I also used the little spruce tree for the background as I could not think how to create buildings.  To get the shading on the snow, I used a scrunched up pad of kitchen roll, inked up and smoothed out.  With care, it seems to work fairly well.  The lady herself was partially coloured with Promarkers (her skirt) and her jacket and hat were printed and cut from a free downloaded tartan backing paper, which toned quite well with the Promarker.

Then I had a go with the cottage kit, which also involved some use of  things that were a little different from the way Barbara worked, again because my stock is of ink pads is not large .  The first attempt will end up taken apart and redone, but the second was better, but I suspect the next version will be better still.  There are too many trees behind and around the cottage - Geoff said it looked as if it had a beard, so less trees on the next one.  I might try putting a lake in too to get some reflections. (EDIT - tried that and promptly chopped it off, didn't work)

My reflections were very variable too with the brayer, but I think they are getting better.   My first attempt had the same problem as I have taking pictures of the sea - the water was running out.  Never mind, guillotines work wonders to straighten up wonky work.  My first one (not shown) was stamped with the black Adirondack and worked fairly well, being quite dramatic.  The one on the left here was done with Adirondack Slate which I think gives a softer more misty look, which I quite like.  I also really like the blue one (Adirondack Denim).  The background hill on both was done with the kitchen roll pad again.  the tree reflection on the blue one smudged on the brayer, but I think that adds to the watery feel.

I was going to show you the pif I sent to Andria for the 2nd Anniversary, follow the link to her blog at  http://andria-drawingnear.blogspot.com/   .  Her photos are better than mine.  I am glad she finally got it and she says she liked it, so ... result.

Anyway, I think that is enough waffling from me this week and I am sure that you will all have fun by popping over to the residence of our leader, Julia, where you will find lots and lots of fascinating desks with loads of different styles, which you will find at  

http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/