Lockdown Cards - 12

It took a while to decide what to do with the alcohol ink pieces I made in the previous post. I found it tricky trying to enhance rather than conceal the beauty of the colours and the patterns. Many diecuts were rejected and then I thought I would just let the background shine with a simple sentiment. I matted the piece with some dark blue card to frame it and mounted it on a white card blank.

This piece did look better with a bigger central sentiment - this one is an old Hero Arts set of 4 called 'A Great Big'. I put it on a gold card blank which brings out the gold mixative in it.

I enjoyed making these so I made a couple more. The first is citrus, cranberry, terracotta and sunshine yellow, matted on gold with a simple sentiment and one of the many butterflies I've folded.

Next is cloudy blue, watermelon, oregano and eggplant.

I had a lot of fun playing with alcohol inks again and I much prefer the effect of this method of puffing air on them rather than dabbing with a felt pad.

Playing with Alcohol (Inks)

I've seen Yupo paper mentioned in relation to alcohol inks for a while but I've never actually seen or felt any so I'm not sure what it's like but it seems to create beautiful effects with alcohol inks which to my mind look more vibrant than the old coated card I'm used to. Alcohol inks seem to have had a bit of a reboot after falling out of favour and I've been meaning to use my neglected collection again.
I remembered that whilst clearing out office things a couple of years ago I had kept some thin
 plastic-y file dividers as I thought they might be useful. I managed to find them and decided to give them a try with the inks. Wow it was fun! There seems more time to move the inks around on this surface and with the aid of an old pen blitzer (I think it belonged to my sons) I was able to puff air at the pools of ink and blender with fab results. One word of warning - please do this in a well-ventilated room - I found the fumes made me quite light-headed.
The one on the left is my favourite made with shell pink, stonewash, stream, denim and gold mixative. On the right is sailboat blue, red pepper, sunshine yellow, lettuce and gold mixative. You can just make out the punched holes from the file divider on it.
I will make these into cards at some point but for now I'm just enjoying the colours and patterns.

Lockdown Cards - 11

The warmer weather has put me in the mood for hotter colours and so I have blended picked raspberry, ripe persimmon and mustard seed DIs on this background. The image and sentiment are from the same set  - Dill by Woodware - both stamped with Versafine onyx black. I used a white pen to highlight some of the text.

Lockdown Cards - 10

A new month and we're still in lockdown in the UK although things look promising for a further loosening of restrictions this month (fingers crossed).
An old Crafty Individuals stamp (CI 389) coloured with Coloursoft pencils and solvent, matted and mounted onto an embossed card blank. I try and make more than one of each of these cards whilst all the stuff is out so I did another in an orange colourway.

Lockdown Cards - 9

A quick card made with a mopped-up background of mowed lawn and salty ocean DIs. The Memory Box die (Chloe Stem) was cut from black and white card. The sentiment is from a Paula Pascual set. I edged the background with a black pen and mounted it on a standard A6 card blank.

Lockdown Cards - 8

I haven't used this agapanthus stamp by Stampendous in a while and thought it was time to give it an airing. I used water based markers to colour the image and spritzed it with water before stamping. The cross-stitch rectangles were from a set from The Works.
The second generation stamping (spritz and stamp again) produced this card:

Lockdown Cards - 7

This image is by Crafty Individuals (CI471). It's not a solid image but has tiny text on it and is quite tricky to stamp cleanly. I found my stamp tool invaluable for this. The background is a mix of blue DIs (ombré again!) and the text is from a Cuttlebug die.