Penny Black challenge

This week's challenge at the Penny Black blog is to make a decorated envelope. I thought the brushstroke stamps would be perfect for this, so I made a few different ones until I got one I liked. (Note to self, don't start with Fabriano cards until you have a good system down!) I painted the stamps with twinkling h20s and misted and stamped, repeating a few times withing re-applying colour. I thought it would be nice to make a card while I was at it, so here's what I came up with.

I really, really love those brushstroke images. They are some of my favourite stamps and it's a pity they're so hard to find here in Canada. Whenever I see one, I snap it up.

I was inspired by the work of Rachel Jackson, whose work often appears in Craft Stamper magazine. Her work is characterized by lots of white space, interesting texture, bright colour, and a certain element of splatter or paint. I was going to go simple on this, but then I thought of the article I just read by her that had interesting text blocks stamped in unusual places so I thought I would give it a whirl. I'm not sure if I like how it turned out, but I like it well enough to use it. I think I will keep experimenting with her approach, which is sort of clean-and-simple meets mixed media. Craft Stamper is a great magazine, but it's also hard to find here. Again, whenever I see it, I snap it up. I'm debating about subscribing, but it's from the UK and quite expensive.

Anyway, back to the card. I added a frame with my Micron, matted the whole thing onto some grey cardstock, and then on a moss green tsumugi card base.

This envelope was stamped in the same way, but with the dragonfly too. He's stamped in Black Emerald twinks, and the same purples and blues for his wings, but without the pomegranate. Black Emerald is THE colour for dragonflies. It's black, but dark green when the light catches.

I don't know what it was about yesterday, but it was a day for paint in our house. The girls spent a long time painting, and got themselves completely covered in paint. And the table, and the floor, and the bathroom when they tried to clean up. It was a monumental mess and they got into a monumental heap of trouble for the series of poor judgment calls that led to the mess. Fast forward to 9 pm when I am stamping away, and dip the hem of my t-shirt into a pot of Rainforest green twinkling h20.... I sigh (it won't wash out) and note the irony. Fast forward to 9:10 pm, when I knock that same pot off my desk and it bounces on the floor, upside down and makes two big spots of dark green on our light coloured carpet under my stamp desk. An interval of intense scrubbing and muttering followed and I got it pretty much out. Luckily our carpet is made of some frightening fibre that repels twinks. I guess the previous owners didn't splash out on wool carpet. Anyway, the irony of the situation wasn't lost on me..... Here's hoping our house isn't in the grip of a similar force today.

I will leave you with the best rapture comment hubby found on-line: "People are making rapture jokes like there's no tomorrow."

Thanks for stopping by!