Gallery Card and City Girl

Hoooo it's been cold here today. I don't think I have been warm all day up until now and that's only because I have two three bar halogen heaters on the go. We had a little flurry of snow earlier but then it turned to rain. More is forecast for tomorrow but I won't get too excited as I don't expect I shall be donning my wellies and making a snowman.

Despite being cold I have had a lovely evening playing. It started off with me trying to sort out the drawer set where I store all my experiments. Techniques I have seen somewhere and just had to try but haven't actually made into anything yet. Doing that I came up with the idea of putting a few of the techniques together onto one card and making a sort of gallery.

GALLERY CARD

I arranged a few pieces onto a layer of black but decided it needed to have a background. I had been meaning to try fluid chalk inks on dark card for a while so I have started simply by stamping all of the background elements in Alabaster using a variety of stamps. The ink took better on some parts of the card than others but I quite liked the faded, ghostly look so decided to go with it.

Starting with the two pieces at bottom left and top right. This technique is one of my most favourites..........Stazon inks and Isopropyl alcohol on silver mirror card. Slightly difficult to scan being on mirror card but I think you can just about make it out. I decanted some of the alcohol into a misting bottle then starting with a Mustard Stazon I dabbed the pad all over a small piece of mirror card, spritzed with the alcohol and then dried with a heat gun. Next I used Olive Green stazon all over, spritzed again and dried. Then depending on the depth of colour you want just keep adding the inks, spritzing and drying until you are happy with it.

If you hold the heat gun away from the piece you get a smooth finish. Closer and the draught from the gun blows the ink around, creating some wonderful patterns.

Also if you work on a piece of card the size you want for your finished piece you retain the lovely crustiness that gathers around the edges of the card as the ink is moved about.

Once the inks are fully dried I buff with a piece of tissue just to make sure that there are no damp spots then I tend to stamp using a Memories black ink pad which stays wet long enough to emboss or a Versafine Onyx Black.

The piece to the left of the centrepiece is stamping onto fun foam. I heated the foam and pressed the Florentine stamp into the warm surface applying quite heavy pressure to make sure I got a good impression. I trimmd the image and then applied Versamark to the surface followed by the green from the new Patina Perfect Pearls. Allowed it to set and then edged the piece with a Krylon pen.

You could also colour using the Rub On Waxes.

The Jigsaw is another one done with the dipping into water spritzed ink which I talked about earlier in the week.

The heart is gold pearl card just grunged with a Saddle Brown Stazon pad.

The key is the Stazon and Isopropyl technique but this time done onto cream pearl card.

The large and small circles are ink and alcohol again........just different colours.

The centrepiece is a 3 x 3 piece of card to which I have applied a texturing paste. Too impatient to wait for the hours I was supposed to leave it to dry........I dried it with a heat gun and got a lovely crusty finish which I coloured with Adirondack inks.

The overstamping is done in black Stazon.

CITY GIRL CARD

I have more bottles of acylic paint than I care to count. Leftovers from when I used to cut wooden shapes and paint them. It seemed a shame to get rid of them so being inspired one day after reading a piece by Trish Bayley on her website. I decided to get my paints out and create some backgrounds.

I used some textured off white card and just brushed the colours on, let them dry and then dry brushed over the top.

The background images were stamped in black Stazon.

The main image I stamped in black Versafine and embossed with clear EP. Added the colour with Adirondack pens and then embossed again with the clear EP.

I really enjoyed creating these cards and hope you enjoy seeing them.

Thanks for visiting

Night night-x-