Quick card

Here's a quick card I threw together this evening. It was a loooong day at work. Not a bad day, just a long one. I also popped out after work to go to Gymboree for some kids clothes and redeem Gymbucks. Now I remember why I never bother to do that! It's a madhouse and involves a lot of decision making. Not a great idea after a long day at work. Luckily things took an upswing when I stopped off on the way home for my Christmas swaps (some gorgeous ones in there) and made myself a cup of tea and tucked myself up in my stamping corner and turned off the world. Aaaaahhhh. Maybe that's why this card turned out faintly zen-like. I just got these rub-ons in the mail this week and thought I would try to use them on a card. They seemed to call out for a simple treatment, so I didn't do too much here. The card base (5x7) is some wonderful tsumugi cardstock in a beautiful oatmeal colour (yes, oatmeal can be beautiful, if you would rather think of it as pearl barley or mushroom blush, feel free, just know that IRL it is a soothing, undemanding colour). The only non-relaxing thing about this card was the vigorous popsicle stick rubbing of the rub-on, but at least I got some exercise today. The card seemed to call for a sentiment in the corner, and I was able to use an uninked stamp that I got from a nice lady in a nearby town when we went in on a PTI order together. It's an old SU stamp, and I have always liked it, but so far have only admired it from afar. It was somewhat gratifying to ink it up. I used Vivid ink in Vintage Green for that purpose, and it is a lovely match to the rub-on. (Unfortunately this only reinforces my tendencies to get every colour of ink around on a just-in-case basis.) I added some of the smaller rub-ons on the inside to continue the theme.

Now I feel rested enough to go and make lunches for tomorrow and fall into bed.

NSR: BBC Canada is showing new episodes of Hustle! I'm very excited. It's a bit of a new crew - Mickey Bricks is back in London and, with old partner Ash, has put together a new team of grifters. I'm not sure if Emma and her brother will be as good as Stacy and Danny, but I was not consulted on the casting. (I'm sure it was an oversight due to timezone or similar.) Mickey & Co can still pull off the perfect long con, to finance Eddie in a new bar of his own. It's on Sundays I think. And the Tudors starts this week (LOVE the costumes!), and the Office started last week (must remember to check out Dwight's blog - it's rotfl funny). Time to start banking up my video debt!

Twinkling blooms

Here's another card from my session experimenting with Twinkling H20's. For this card, I used my twinklings to apply colour directly to the stamp! In real life the colour is really vibrant and the shimmer is very apparent.

To do this technique, you need a fairly solid image stamp and you need to mist your twinklings and let them sit a bit to get nice because you want a nice thick application of paint to your stamp. Before you stamp you need to mist the stamp and I also misted the watercolour paper to make sure the pigment transferred well. Once I stamped the central flower, I re-misted my stamp and got two more images that way. The change in intensity makes for a nice look.

Once I had my images down, I added some background colour with my stipple brush. In real life it's not quite as dark as in the scan. I used blue near the top, some yellow and plum on the blossoms and green near the bottom. The sentiment is from the new Sale-A-Bration rub-on package. I kept the embellishments fairly simple on this card but I did add some eggplant acrylic paint in three spots just to frame the image. The raisin paper is a textured cardstock so it didn't need any stamps.

I'm pleased with the results of this experiment and I'll definitely be trying this technique again. I'm also in love with these Penny Black brush stroke stamps. I just need to find a good Canadian source. I found this one at Western Educational in Edmonton, but that's not terribly convenient for me. I'll need to keep looking. I have my eye on a few more of those stamps, especially the side-on butterfly, the dragonfly, and some of the botanicals. They're just too beautiful!

Thanks for looking!

Supplies: Stamp: Penny Black; Ink: brocade blue, summer sun, perfect plum, wild wasabi; Paper: watercolour, garden green, textured raisin cardstock; Accessories: Love and Happiness rub-on - Stampin' Up, stipple brush, eggplant acrylic paint - Ranger.