Imagine by Brenda

A very good morning, Brenda here with today's share of more samples from Lesley's recent Hochanda shows which featured he most beautiful floral and Butterfly stamps that were a joy to work with.

My starting place for the above card was a background of Oxide Distress Inks which like so many of us I am totally addicted to. Onto the background I stenciled an arch window using Distress Ink, stamped what is probably my favourite Chocolate Baroque sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp sheet using Versafine Toffe and using the same ink stamped a selection of leaves around the edge from the Tangled Garden stamp sheet. The beautiful Butterfly is from the same set stamped onto Bristol cardstock and coloured with distress inks, the same colours as the background but not Oxides as I find the chalky finish can detract from the detail of the image.

For this card I used the blooms from Bold Blooms and leaves from the same set and Tangled Garden, stamping all onto a piece of card coloured with Distress Inks and Pearl Mica Spray, I like to add that to inky backgrounds sometimes as it helps to bleed the colours and also leaves a nice sheen. I used a piece of torn paper to create a sunray effect when I wanted to place the flower which I layered up after cutting our three different sized blooms . I cut he leaves out and arranged onto a hand drawn stem with a little bit of doodling to ass interest. The lovely Wordsworth quote is also from Bold Blooms.

I had an idea to create a shadow box surrounded by Butterfly, so started out with the base made using a die set. I coloured a large sheet of card with Distress Oxides concentrating on keeping within a tonal colour palette of oranges and yellows. Onto that I stamped several Butterflies from Tangled Garden and cut out ready to assemble around the frame. The fairy within the aperture is from June Fairy set and grasses from Silhouette Grasses stamped with Versafine Toffee and a masked and inked background plus a few small stamped Butterflies. Finally I layered the Butterflies around and within the layers of the shadow box.

This one to coin Charlie of Hochanda's words is "heavy on the grunge", I started with acrylic paints and brushed them randomly over a piece of 600gsm Fabriano cardstock, it's so sturdy that it takes water and wet mediums without warping. Next added some texture paste through a stencil to the top corner and applied some gilding polish to lift the pattern. I also added some gold gilding flakes here and there. The Lily is from the Lily Fuchsia and Hyacinth multibuy stamped with versamark and heat embossed with copper detail powder and then colour added using the same acrylic paint as the background, the sentiment is from Birthday Words and finally some lace tied across the bottom.

On the rare occasion I find myself with time on my hands I make up a batch of inky backgrounds as I find it really handy to have some in reserve when I am up against the clock to get sample made. This is one of those using acrylic paints and crackle glaze onto which I randomly stamped a sentiment from Birthday Words and then the focal bloom from Breath of Spring  using Versafine Black and then colourd in with sparkle pens and stickles. The base has been stamped with several of the foliage stamps from the Lily Fuchsia and Hyacinth multibuy.

As always my thanks for taking the time to visit today.