Our guest designer this week is Shaz Brooks who has designed this beautiful card using a variety of our stamps. This is a long and detailed post, but well worth the read. So pull up a chair and take time to enjoy.
(Measurements are in
inches, as firstly, I still think that way, and second, my Tim Holtz ruler is
in inches!)
One of the wonderful things about Glenda's stamps is how
beautifully they mix and match, you are never limited to working just with the
stamps in a particular set. For this project,
I’ve used stamps from four different Chocolate Baroque sets:
Serenity,
GothicFragments,
Floral Edges and
Words of Wisdom.
I began by taking a piece of white card roughly 6” x 6”.
I sprayed it with a mix of blue and
purple; I mixed Distress Re-inkers (
Salty Ocean and
Seedless Preserves) with
water in mini misters, but any spray inks will do the job. After spraying, I
blotted the paper with kitchen towel, which left a lovely muted background.
Now
I overstamped this
piece with a couple of stamps from the Gothic
Fragments, one of the Floral Edges and the Wisteria branch from Serenity. So
the overstamping stayed soft to match the background, they were all stamped in
Salty Ocean, and each time I stamped the image onto scrap before stamping on my
background, giving me a paler second generation image.
I sprayed a second piece, roughly 3” x 6”, in
the same way, then
overstamped with
another of the Gothic Fragments, finally inking up the Old English Prayer from
the Words of Wisdom set in Versafine
Majestic Blue and stamping that over the
top.
Next I took another
piece of white card, and stamped the Buddha image from Serenity in Memento Tuxedo Black, as I was going to colour it with Promarkers.
Using the ink left on the stamp, I also
stamped a post-it note mask for the image. I trimmed the mask on
the lines, so I would not get a ‘halo’ effect around my image. The post it mask
was placed over the top, so that I could add colour to the ‘sky’ around the
image, using Adirondack inks in Aqua, Stonewashed,
Sailboat Blue, and just a
touch of
Denim at the edges, with a
Colorbox Stylus tool. You can do this with sponges, an ink applicator or brushes, whatever your preferred method is. The sky took up roughly 2/3 of the image, so
the bottom third was coloured for grass, again with Adirondacks in Willow,
Citrus and a little
Lettuce.
After this was
totally dry, I added colour to the image using markers. The final touch was to
add gilding flakes to the shrine the Buddha is sitting inside, and to the
adornment
on the Buddha's head. The background sheet, Buddha and the Prayer were each matted onto dark blue card.
For my base card, I
cut two sheets of dark Grey Metallic card to 9”x 7 1/2”. Measuring in 1 1/2”
from one short edge on each sheet, I scored a line down the card. At this point
I also cut two sheets of white copy paper to make an insert for the greeting
later, always wise when using a dark card base. Sandwiching the two white
sheets between the two pieces of card, I punched two holes in the narrow
section that had been scored. Now I threaded fibres through these holes, and
tied together. You could use twine/ribbon/string, whatever
you like. My ‘fibres’ are actually ‘eyelash wool’. I added a pale purple and
pale blue brad top and bottom of the spine to secure it firmly.
Now the background
sheet was stuck to the card front using double sided tape, and the Buddha image mounted on top of that, again
with tape. I added little foam pads to
the back of the Prayer, to give a little dimension, and mounted it at an angle
partly over the Buddha image.The final little
embellishment I spotted lying on my desk- a little punched dragonfly. I had
some scraps from a project a few weeks ago, using gilding flakes on black card,
and had punched a few dragonflies and butterflies from the last bits. I added
him with a little blob of silicone glue.
I hope you enjoy this project, and it encourages you to mix
up your CB stamps a little. All the inks and tools I have used can be swapped
for what you have with no ill effects, you can use Distress Inks instead of
Adirondacks, for instance. You can even mix Distress Inks and Adirondacks if
you wish.
I’ve really enjoyed doing this, although I have to admit my
nerves were a bit frayed at the edges whilst I was doing it, I was sure
something was going to go horribly wrong, especially as I got closer to being
finished; I had visions of a dropped inkpad ruining everything!
Thank you so much for this Shaz, we have enjoyed having you as a guest designer. And if this post has inspired you why not leave a comment. To see more of Shaz's designs check her blog out here
