Claritystamp One Day Wonder Shows - 4th Jan 2016

Hello again.  Here as promised are my samples from the One Day Wonder shows.  I'm not surprised that you all went mad for the wee shops and houses.  They're fab aren't they?

New Home

As soon as I saw these stamps I knew I wanted to do a new home card incorporating the word chains and using one of the houses as an "O"

Loads of masking involved in this one so it was out with the post-its!  I figured out on a piece of copy paper what I wanted to do, then cut a piece of card to size and masked off the frame before stamping the sentiment into place with black archival ink.  You just need to cover up with a post-it the part of the stamp you don't want ink on, then remove it before stamping onto the card. 

Then I drew in the border with a black micron pen, and covered up this middle section while I stamped the houses and shops into place.  First the row at the bottom, leaving some gaps and staggering them so I got variation in height.  These were then masked off before I stamped the second row.  Once the masks are removed, this makes the first row look they are in front of the others.  I just kept adding rows of houses until I had filled the frame. 

I chose a green and blue spectrum noir pencil to colour in the background, leaving the houses and shops completely white.  As Barbara said, this really makes the images pop.  Just black Sharpie pen around the edge to finish.

A walk in the park

 

Making this card proved to be anyyhing but a walk in the park, and it was nearly consigned to the reject pile, aka, the bin!!!!!!

First, I figured out the layout on some copy paper, made faint pencil marks on the stencil card to help with the positioning of the wee houses which were stamped in black archival.  These were then masked off, so I could brush through one of the abstract squares stencil with mermaid lagoon and twisted citron distress inks.  So far, so good.  Now for the trees...  and a disaster with a second generation one plotted at the right hand side.  For a while I wasn't sure what to do;  I just knew I didn't really want to have to throw it away.  In the end, I trimmed the piece right back to chop of the offending tree and brushed the same inks through the same stencil onto a separate piece of card, so that the stencil design continued almost seamlessly onto the background card. 

 

A couple more trees were added using a custom ink pad made with the same colour distress inks, then the cyclist and a couple of grasses were added to the foreground.  A little bit of colour was added to the houses with spectrum noir pencils and a black sharpie pen used to edge the central piece before mounting in place.

 

Magical

 

This desgn waa inspired by a Clarity challenge DT piece I made a while ago.

http://itscraftoclock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-wee-folk-fairies-come-out-to-play.html

Click on the link above to take you to the original project if you want another look.

 

This one was done with inks rather than paint.  First I pulled grunge paste through the star stencil.  Once this was dry I put the crescent moon mask into place and started brushing and blending the inks, working in a circular motion.  I used squeezed lemonade, picked raspberry and blueprint sketch distress inks.  It does take time to build up this intensity of colour, but its worth it I think.  Then I very lightly dry brushed a tiny bit of gold acrylic paint to highlight the stars.

 

Simple torn paper hills and first and second generation stamping in black archival create the scene.  And that should have been it.  At least until I spluttered and left a couple of splodges.  I'm sure you can guess where they are...  yes, under "Magical" and a couple of the decoupaged stars.  Sometimes needs must!  Some glitter added the final finishing touch.

 

Thanks for so many lovely comments about these cards.  I'm glad you like them, and I hope they give you a bit of inspiration for your own work.  Till next time.  Xxx