Cards - A Selection from the Year So Far

Inchies

A small Ecoboard tile (inchie) stamped with Crafty Individuals stamps and coloured with Distress Stains and mounted on a little collage of stamping, including 'one of a kind' postal mark from Stamping All Day on a DL Kraft brown card blank.

Acrylic Paint and Clear Embossing Resist

I made a fair few '40' cards this year I made some of the same cards in different colours using the techniques shown in the shabby tag tuturial, a clear embossing resist for acrylic paint.  Along with some Nestabilities and number dies or happy birthday stamp to finish.  All unique no matter how many I made, thanks to the paint effects and the random stamping of the flourishes. 

Simple Stamping

 A really simple but effective use of torn coloured paper, outline stamping over cream or red paper, matt and layering of the images and a rosette (prepared scoring with ruler and embossing tool).  Some final little details to finish; glossy accents over the cricket ball, a '7' inside the rosette and a random handstamped sentiment off-set to the right.

Mirror Images

This card was C5 size.  I started by creating a watercolour wash of sky and grass for the background, with some grass stamped with watercolour crayon paint.  All other details were prepared separately and later glued in position on the card.  The horse is from an old Woodware stamp set.  One horse was stamped in the normal way and the one was prepared by picking up the ink from the stamp with a brayer and then carefully rolling the brayer onto card to create a mirror image of the stamp - that way I could have the horses facing one another.  The horses were coloured with watercolour crayons and pencils.

The bunting elements were created by stamping chalk ink with a diamond shaped stamp, cut in half and over stamped with a number 5.  The riding lesson post was cut out by hand.  I used real rubber to stamp the sentiment and 'riding lessons' text, so there is no way you can see to get them level - I usually resort to stamping them wobbly on purpose, then it's OK to be a little off!

Fancy Papers and Nextabilities

Lots of co-ordinating fancy papers by K and Company were layered up to create this card.  A square, slightly smaller than the 144x144mm card blank was cut along with strip the same width and three sizes of Nestabilities (Labels Four).  Anniversary was stamped over a light coloured strip with a co-ordinating ink and matted onto the darker background paper.  This was stuck on the top die cut through the centre and trimmed by hand.  The die cuts and strip of paper was edged lightly with 'brushed corduroy' distress ink to give an aged effect and everything was layered up with Pinflair glue gel to allow easy alignment of the plaques.

Clear Embossing Resist

Using clear embossing enamel as a resist is one of my favourite techniques and teaming it up with Distress inks makes it very quick and easy.  I used a new stamp from Inkylicious called 'Delicate vines' and stamped in randomly around the edges with embossing ink, sprinkled with clear embossing powder and heat embossed.  I then coloured the card with three colours of Distress inks; Bundled Sage, Frayed Burlap and Scattered Straw using foam.  I continued the random stamping of the leaves around the edges in the Distress ink colours.  To make the resist show through I buffed the card with kitchen paper towel.  Happy birthday was stamped and clear heat embossed, Distress ink in Bundled Sage was applied over the top, again buffing it up.  The panel was matt and layered with white and Distress ink coloured card in Frayed Burlap and mounted with foam pads in the centre.