Barbara's Claritystamp show - 3rd Jan 2016

Hello there.  Hope you managed to tune in and watch Barbara Gray working her Clarity magic on Hochanda on Sunday afternoon.

Here are my samples from the show.

Birthday bunting

 

As Barbara said, this is a real less is more card.  It might look simple, but there were a few rejects along the way!  Mainly to do with learning to build up the colour gradually so it didn't seep under the mask (how does she know this?).  For the larger bunting, I  sponged through with black soot distress ink to create the shadow.  I then blended squeezed lemonade, picked raspberry and mermaid lagoon distress inks for the bunting:  the smaller one was done directly on to the card, the larger one onto a separate piece and cut out and decoupaged (slightly offset so you can see the shadow underneath).  All I needed to do now was to stamp the word chain in black archival and add the shadow to the smaller bunting with a black micron pen.  

Spooky castle

 

First job was to coat the stencil in black archival and run through my embossing machine.  I put the large moon mask and castle mask in place.  The sky was brushed in with wilted violet and carved pumpkin distress inks.  I then used the other half of the castle mask and covered up the sky while I brushed in the castle with a little wilted violet and black soot distress inks.  I defined the skyline by sweeping downwards using black soot on a make-up sponge.  I then added in a further hill in the foreground again using black soot distress ink.  The mask for this was hand cut from copy paper to match the root line of the tree.

 Rainbow houses

 

I have to admit to being a bit obsessed with this mix of squeezed lemonade, picked raspberry and mermaid lagoon distress inks at the moment.  I simply blended the inks through the stencil, roughly pulled through some clear embossing paste from left to right, not worrying about getting full coverage as I got over to the right hand side.  I then removed the stencil and simply sprinkled on clear micro beads and a tiny amount of Glamour Dust glitter, graduating the coverage again from left to right, and set aside to dry overnight.  The same distress inks were blended onto centura pearl card and sprinkled with water for a co-ordinating background.  Its very subtle, but I also stamped the wee houses randomly over this background in the matching distress ink (blotting and plotting the pink and the blue so the effect remained delicate).

 

Grungy houses

  

 

This piece was made in a very similar way to the rainbow houses above, but I've achieved a very different look here.  I started by collaging old book pages onto the background piece of card and then spraying with distress stains and brayering over Paperartsy fresco finish acrylic paints.  Then I pulled through grunge paste and randomly sprinkled on some Frantage embossing powder.  This was melted once the grunge paste was dry.  I replaced the stencil, and highlighted the doors and windows with scattered straw distress ink, the roofs with spiced marmalade and the houses themselves with crushed olive distress ink.  I made the background by brayering these same colours onto my craft mat and spritzing with water.

 

Car and cogs

   

First, I brushed and blended wilted violet, mermaid lagoon and twisted citron through the clockwork stencil.  Then I used one of my Clarity wheelie stencils as a template to mark the centre and cut out the circle and window.  I had a fun shaving foam session using the same colour distress reinkers for the base card.  I planned the layout and positioning carefully on some copy paper before putting ink to my favourite shaving foam piece.  Black archival ink sponged through the stencil, having masked off the surrounding area and the word chains simply stamped;  although I did curve these a little as I put them on the mounts to make them fit the circular design a bit better.   Black sharpie pen round the edges and a brad in the centre to finish.

Thanks for all the positive feedback I've had about these cards.  Every time the deadline to send in the samples approaches, I still have a little wobble about whether what I've done is good enough, so I really appreciate all your lovely comments.  I'll be blogging the rest of my cards soon so please pop back for a look.  Till next time.  Xxx