Ballroom dancing

Hello there.  Blogging again, I hear you say?  I'm definitely on a roll at the moment!  Aren't these new dancer stencils fab?  This one in particular really evokes all the glamour of the ballroom, something I tried to capture in my samples.

For this first one I used picked raspberry, wilted violet and blueprint sketch distress inks and built up the background colour gradually with my Clarity stencil brushes.  It does take quite a bit of time to build up this intensity of colour.  I went round the edge with black distress ink and a blending tool.  I think I might have added a bit of chipped sapphire as well to add even more drama.

Then I started work on the large "glitterball" moon.  I cut out a large circle of double sided adhesive sheet and stuck it into place.  Then, working across a row at a time, stuck the squares of kitchen foil into place.  Buff up when finished, and brush on a little talc to de-tack any exposed adhesive.

All that was left to do was to put the dancers in place.  I always feel a bit nervous when I've done so much work on a project and am about to tackle the final make or break stage.  This time, I got a beautiful crisp image with the black embossing paste and sprinkled on some black distress glitter for a really luxurious effect.

The piece below was done using one of the new Claritystamp designer papers.  I used the softer, more muted side of this particular design as my background.  

I made a paper mask of the stencil design to allow me to overlap the dancing couples.  It took me quite a while to decide on the colour to use for each of the couples as I wanted each one to be different, but still co-ordinate with each other; and tone in with the background too.  I sponged purple ink through the couple at the front;  this would add a barely noticeable shadow once I paper pieced the design, and also provide the much needed guide for accurate placement of each of the pieces.  However, I didn't do the paper piecing until the rest of the design was complete.  Cover the first couple with the paper mask, reposition the stencil and sponge through blue ink.  Repeat this step with pink ink for the third couple.

Add some definition round the edge with a blending tool and purple ink.

Using the other side of the same designer paper, I paper pieced the first couple.  Simply mounted onto white card to finish. 

I hope you like them.  Thanks for visiting.  See you again soon.  Till next time.  Xxx