Being cheeky, works

Hello there

I am rather pleased with this card.

I've been cheeky, as I used a stamped image I got when I was on the Indigo Blu retreat in March. I did use some green on the leaves too but it's not that visible in this photo. I just wanted to add the slightest bit of colour to the image, to help maintain it's elegant pose. We were also given the pages from a copy of the Pride and Prejudice book at the retreat, as the image is of Elizabeth Bennett. I've yet to show you one of the projects we did with this book paper at the retreat, as I'm not happy with it yet; I still need to work on it to get it how I want it.

I cut the flower out of vellum using the Flower Shoppe cartridge- it's the scallop flower on page 13 of the booklet. The swirls in the background were created with a stamp I made from the lace 2 element on page 42 of the Ornamental Iron 2 cartridge. I used some leftover cuts I had of that element from a post I did last month - I put them behind the flower, as I've seen Sue Wilson do so many times and finally I get round to trying it out myself. 


Inside the card, I had a bit of a play and used vellum as the insert and stamped the swirl on it and the sentiment. What I quickly learnt is that vellum absorbs the ink and makes it swell out. I've got away with it on the swirls but the sentiment became illegible, so I had to stamp it again on the card and stick it over the old imprint. I'm not sure it's completely worked and be warned if you try it - be patient! Give it time to dry.

The box envelope was easy to create with my Ultimate Pro but the fun bit was stamping with white Stazon on acetate. I hadn't done this before. Ranger's Archival ink didn't seem to work i.e it didn't dry; which is odd as it did when I made the box for my Mother's Day present box  this year. I made the mistake though of asking Chris, who has a chemistry background, about what to use to clean my stamp with afterwards - therein followed a long speel about the various types of solvent inks and how they react and blah blah blah but he did help me realise that IPA was worth a shot and it worked!! I used the swirl stamp (which was created with Cricut cuttables) on an acrylic block and it cleaned them brilliantly without disintegrating them. One happy dance later and the box was complete.

Take care out there

Wouldn't it be cool if I really could have a swirl pattern
painted into the lawn with that stuff they use on
footall pitches :-)