Black White Red - Fun with ATCs

This is a single ATC I put together for the Fun with ATCs blog.  Rather than an actual ATC swap you just post pictures of your ATC via your blog.

The theme this time is Black, White, Red.  These colours always say 'Oriental' to me and one of the first stamps I ever bought (Judikins at Stamp Addicts) is a lovely image of a Japanese lady, which I never get tired of using in different projects and I thought it would be perfect for this.

A limited colour palette here and a simple card layout, so I didn't use too many bits and pieces; red dye ink, black pigment ink, embossing ink, along with some clear embossing powder, red water colour paint (from Inktense blocks by Derwent), a red fine liner pen and just three stamps.

The main watercoloured image was cut out and teamed up with a background of cherry blossom (Claritystamps), highlighted with red pen.  The card was also lightly coloured with red ink around the edges using foam.

As an embellishment, a symbol meaning beauty (stamp from Muji) was stamped and clear embossed, cut out, then coloured with red dye ink.  The clear embossing acts as a resist.

The main image and embellishment were fixed to the card with dimensional glue.

One, Two, Three.

A workshop with Claritystamp left me thoroughly inspired.  Here's what I did next..........

I started off with my new stamp 'Tall Trees' and ended up with three very different pieces.

One.....
I've had a Gelli-plate nearly a year now and have a colourful collection of prints pulled from it.

Prints used for paper piecing

I love mixing the prints with inks and stamping and the larger areas in the image of the Tall Trees stamp is perfect for paper piecing and decoupage.  In archival ink, the image was stamped a number of times, once on white stamping card to use as a base image, once on a green print, once on a blue print and once on a black print which had been back filled in the white areas with grey ink using foam.

Some of the different elements of the stamp; sky, trunks and ground were cut out and stuck down with a wet glue.  The canopy was cut out and positioned with dimensional glue.  The final piece was mounted onto another print.

Two....
On Clarity card the Tall Trees stamp was stamped with black dye ink.  Once dry I used the Texture Stamps 'dots' to make short work of some pointillism - stamping more than one dot of a time, with a selection of lovely coloured dye ink.

Brown, green, grey and blue inks

Texture Stamps - I used the dots only on this occasion

Where necessary I used the Tall Trees masks and Post-its to prevent colouring the wrong area.

Stamping the background with the trees masked

I really like the effect and how the final piece came out.

Three....
When I first saw the Tall Trees stamp it made me think of 20's and 30's pottery designs, so my final piece is inspired by the colours of Clarice Cliff.

Using fine line felt nibbed pens, the open areas of the stamp were filled with lined zentangle.  A really easy technique which is basically doodling.

Baby ATC

When I saw the theme for the swap this month I immediately wanted to do something that was a little bit different. 

The theme was 'Baby', but there are no pastels here!

I thought it would be appropriate to recognise the birth of our new Prince, but not make it too serious and predictable (hopefully).

The backgrounds were stamped up in black on white with a number of different images (music, script, blots and spots, 'boy' and a Great Britain seal) to give the impression of newsprint.

A strip of black paper was ripped for the corner of the ATC and random stampings from a number of different alphabet sets (black on white) were cut into little squares and mounted on the black strip of paper with wet glue.

The prams were made by stamping union flag images by Inkylicious (Union Jack 2 part) and dots from Fields of Sky stamp (Stamp Addicts) in random red and blue colours on white card and punching out circles, then cutting out a quarter.  Pram wheels were made by stamping in red with a button stamp and punched with a small circle punch. The prams were trimmed with ribbon, twine or lace which was glued or taped into position.

Baby George was an old stamp I've had for years (from Lakeland), he was stamped on cream card in black and a little pink chalk was rubbed onto his cheeks.  The dummy was highlighted with golden colour marker pen and gold foil.

The crowns were from Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Mini Ornates set and are coloured with Distress markers and highlighed with gold Stickles glitter glue and a paste gem.

All the parts for the main image of the pram, baby and crown were stuck together from the back with some supporting pieces of card and wet glue, then mounted with foam pads.

I enjoyed making these and I hope the ladies who get the swaps are pleased.