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.

Things changed as it developed

This card is one that changed as I worked on it.  I had a plan, but something else took over and the plan vanished.  I had intended to use this birthday card, which I was making for someone special to also fulfil the brief for my DT piece for Craft A Scene.

As I go through this, you will see that the scene bit gradually faded into the background.  The recipient lives just outside Cardiff so I particularly wanted to use these Welsh themed stamps.

Ingredients

Theuva card (Clarity Stamps)

Clarity stamps - The Six Cities of Wales and the dragon remountable

Low tack masking tape

Speedball brayer

Adirondack - Cloudy Blue, Juniper, Lettuce

Big and Juicy inkpad (find whatever dye based pad you want as these appear to be out of production now - you will need a darkish blue changing to a purple-ish colour)

Attach your card to a piece of copy paper with the low tack masking tape.  You may also need to de-tack the tape by pressing it on your clothes first.  You will see why later on.  Stamp the large Six Cities stamp first, using the Adirondack Pitch Black.  Then add the Dragon in the centre.  The beauty of transparent stamps is that you can see exactly where you are placing things.  Give them a moment or two to dry and then add your sun/moon mask.

Using the brayer, add the Cloudy Blue to the sky area, coming in from the corner, making sure that you always keep the leading edge of the brayer clear of ink to avoid the possible stripes.

The load the brayer with the purple-ish colour, according to what you have and repeat the process for the sky, leaving just a little of the Cloudy Blue towards the bottom of the sky. 

Turn your work completely round, load your brayer with Juniper and start to work upwards from the bottom corner, still keeping that leading edge clear of ink.  Cloudy Blue and Juniper are not strong colours but they do provide a really good base for other colours.

With a piece of copy paper, torn into a rough hill shape, load your brayer with Lettuce, and start to put in your hills, moving your hill shape up the card as you finish each hill.  Remember that the hills closer to you will be the darkest.

This is where the scene idea slipped a little, so that the hills did not show well enough to fit that brief.  However, as a birthday card for the intended recipient, I was happy with it.

At this stage, it is time to start removing the masking tape.  Serious care is needed at this point, if you are not to totally destroy your creation.  Always pull the tape downwards and away from your work.  that way, if it sticks as this one did, you are not pulling your artwork to pieces.  I obviously did not de-tack the tape enough first.  Even low tack tape can stick too firmly at times as you can see.

Once you have removed the tape, have a good look at the result and then you can decide where you need to trim your picture to.

It is up to you how you want to mount the final result.  If you can pick out one of the stronger colours as your final card, that will look the best, in my opinion.

I like to try to match up the inserts to the front of the card.  In this case, I printed the sentiment inside from the computer, matching the colour of the writing to the card.  Then I stamped the watchbird stamp, which is a special family stamp and not commercially available.

To finish off, I used the brayer to bring the purple colour up from the bottom of the card, fading it upwards.

Looking at the finished card, I realised I forgot to say that I also got a make up sponge and just added a little orangy yellow to the sun.

Hope you like this card and can follow my description of how I got to the end result.  You do not need a lot of things to create a card, and everything that I have used here could be done with different stamps and colours.  The technique remains the same.  You just use it to create something individual to you and what you have.

If you like it or want to ask a question, please just leave me a comment and I will answer you.  Have fun.

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.

Using the computer to emboss

This is a technique taught to me by Shaz ( http://silverwolfcards-shaz.blogspot.com/ ) quite some time ago, but I thought it was time to revisit it.  You need an inkjet printer and time to play with the settings (each one is slightly different).  You can use any font you have on your computer to create a sentiment for the front of your card, as shown on these first two cards.  To print and emboss, as on these, you need good quality parchment with a nice shiny surface.


Get all your embossing equipment ready before you start, the top off the jar and copy paper to sprinkle over.  Once it comes out of the printer, speed is all important in getting the powder over the writing, then you can relax a little.  I have found that it is better to print on the normal setting.  High quality takes too long and the writing has already started to dry out, draft is not quite wet enough, but practice on your own machine to find the right balance.  Don't try to do too much on a sheet at one time, as it will have started to dry out.  If you use spray adhesive, such as Crafters Companion Stick and Stay you can stick your sentiment onto backing card before attaching to your card.


The next card was done in a similar way.  I was inspired by the Framer stamps from Barbara Gray (Clarity Stamps).  I took the name I needed, and increased the size of the central "O" , placing the other two letters as I wanted on either side.  (I did the setting up of the word in My Craft Studio Professional).  Once I had that right, I printed direct to an A5 sheet of Clarity silk art card, and embossed it direct from the printer.  I had treated the card with a light dusting of baby powder to reduce static, and then dusted off any stray speckles of embossing powder with a paint brush, before embossing from underneath.

Having got the embossing out of the way, I printed another copy on copy paper and cut out the "O".  I used the flowers from the Flower framer kit to place the flowers in and around the "O", and the Speedball brayer to colour in the background, both in the "O" and around the outside framework.  The flowers were coloured with promarkers.  You can polish the silk card to a high sheen with a screwed up pad of kitchen roll, but make sure you do that BEFORE doing anything else, otherwise you could wreck everything you have done.   I edged the white section with a copper coloured pen, and used a Krylon Copper pens to edge the whole card.    Both those pens will smudge if you attempt to polish after you have used them.  I found that out the hard way.  However butterflies are very useful in covering up minor blips.

I love Barbara Gray

Finally, the creative juices are starting to flow, and new things are being tried - not just finishing off old ones.  Having watched Barbara Gray on Sunday (I do wish Create and Craft wouldn't alter the times - it made a mess of my pre-set recording), I was dying to have another go at brayering.  I know all the theory, but actually putting it into practice is very different.  

I stamped the silver birches onto the silk card, and then followed what she had done with the Versamark pen and clear embossing powder, covering the trees themselves.  The first attempt was rubbish.  Not sure if it was the pen (lack of use), not enough powder or the just a rubbish crafter.  So once it had cooled, I added more Versamark and more powder and reheated.  Much better this time.  I really wanted to use a dark colour, a pale grey or something like that, but I haven't got that yet.  The darkest I had was the Mountain Meadow Big and Juicy, so that is what I used.  Having inked up the brayer, I duly took off what I thought was most of the ink and started flicking the brayer across.  Wrong!  I needed to take off much more ink.  The background is now far too bright for what I wanted, so that attempt will go on the shelf until I decide how I can recover it for use.  Never mind, it was only a play, and you don't get things right every time.  Hopefully, you learn.  I did have another go with the brayer, this time taking off so much ink I could not see any left on the brayer.  The result was much better, so that piece of card will also go onto the shelf until I decide what to stamp onto it.

I also had a go at stamping onto acetate, then spraying with adhesive and applying silver leaf to the back.  after burnishing that, I mounted it onto plain black card, then onto silver mirri card, and onto black again, before mounting the whole thing onto a piece of pearlescent white card.  I was quite pleased with the result, which will make quite a good card for a man, being very plain and simple.  I can print a sentiment off on acetate, back that with silver leaf and mount that up below the image.

I am so pleased with my new printer.  It will print everything I have tried so far, including quite thick card, up to 350gsm, which is what I had hoped for.  So I can use it to print a background direct to the card before matting an layering on top of it.  I even tried with a piece of textured card.  Perfect!

By the way, how does anyone else store Clarity stamps to keep them safe, but accessible?  Mine are still stuffed in the box and the paper they came in.  Not good as I cannot remember what I have, so if I want anything, they all come out.  Any ideas gratefully received.