Bleeding Art Tissue Technique Playtime!

It's half term which means I've found a bit of extra time to play! I first saw the bleeding art tissue technique on the fabulous Eileen Godwin's blog and she has since made a YouTube tutorial which explains it really well. I bought some of the tissue a few weeks ago from Amazon and when I was thinking about what to do for my first project with it I found three challenges that combined so well with the technique that I vowed I would have a go this week.

I have used some of my favourite white linen cardstock as a base for the technique. I chose pinks and blues because I really wanted to enter Lavinia Stamps Challenge #5 as Eileen is on their DT. Their theme this month is to use 'Blue, Pink or Both', together with Lavinia stamps or dies. I have used three different stamps: Sky (the musical fairy) inked with Versafine, the Spiral of Spells inked with Memento and the fairy dust from another set which has been inked with Versamark and embossed.

I also wanted to enter Happy Little Stampers Sketch Challenge for May. I only discovered Happy Little Stampers quite recently and along with it the equally fabulous Loll Thompson's blog. Loll is on the HLS DT and makes wonderful CAS cards. Their sketch features circles of colour. Hence I chose circles as my theme: the bleeding art tissue circles, the Spiral of Spells stamp, the fairy dust stamp and in the background some inking through a piece of sequin waste. I did end up turning their sketch 90 degrees as I found my finished piece looked better on my 5x7" card blank this way round.

I also really fancied entering the current Time Out Challenge #31. Their theme this fortnight is 'Grunge with the optional twist of embossing'. I make so many quite CAS cards these days that I really fancied the challenge of combining grunge with CAS and I hope the team think I have pulled it off. I was going to distress the edges and maybe add a few splatters but something said I should stop and not overdo and maybe spoil it!

I finished the artwork by embossing the fairy's wings (though this doesn't really show up on the photo). I used a mat of dark blue card and finished with a computer-generated sentiment onto a piece of blue vellum which I've then cut into a banner.

Supplies Used:

Tissue: Spectra Art Tissue (Amazon)

Stamps: Sky (fairy), Spiral of Spells, fairy dust (Lavinia Stamps)

Ink pads: Blue Lagoon (Versafine), Summer Sky & Angel Pink (Memento), Versamark

Embossing Powder: Stardust (Funstamps)

Sentiment Font: Angelic War

Snippets: White linen cardstock, Sequin waste, Powder Blue Promarker, Blue textured cardstock, Blue vellum (Papermania)

I really enjoyed taking time out to experiment with a new technique today and join in a few new challenges. Thanks so much for stopping by. I will be back tomorrow with this week's card for CAS Colours and Sketches.

Stef x

Thistles and Wild Flowers

I've been playing around with stencils and paste and made this card for my friend Tracy's birthday. The background was made using textured paper coloured with Pan Pastels. The stamped thistles are from one of my favourite companies Lavinia Stamps with Distress inks. The paste is a pearlescent one from Dreamweaver used with a Sweet Poppy stencil (designed by Tracey from Lavinia Stamps) called 'Wild Flowers'. Inspiration for the shape came from this weeks 'Less is More' challenge.

I would like to enter it into the following challenges:
Lavinia Stamps Challenge #3: Add Something Pink
Less Is More Lucky Dip Week 165: Round and Round

Thanks for looking!
Stef

Making Twinchies with my Lavinia stamps

I was having a look at Lavinia Stamps great new challenge blog the other night, wondering what I could make to enter their second challenge. The theme is 'Bright and Beautiful' and it immediately reminded me of the hymn 'All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small', and so the idea started to form... I also hopped over to one of their designers, Eileen's blog (which is great by the way) and she had been making 'Twinchies' for the 'Show Us Your Twinchies' challenge blog. I had never come across Twinchies before so that was it - I had to have a go and combine the challenges.

Show Us Your Twinchies Challenge #4

The Twinchie challenge theme #4 is 'Spring' so that fitted perfectly. For my 'small creatures' I stamped Tracey's two pixies onto shrink plastic and made a background with inks, sponges, tiny star shaped sequin waste, a moon mask and a water spritzer, finishing with a few drops of fairy dust (Stickles). I was worried that the images would come out too small but actually they were perfect for what I wanted. So here we have my first ever Twinchie with the tiny pixies dancing at the vernal equinox!

Lavinia Stamps Challenge #2

For the Lavinia Stamps challenge, I made two more Twinchies, as before and graduated the different coloured inks so that they changed from earth to sky as you travel up the card. I used two more of Tracey's stamps, 'Slender Mushrooms' and 'Spiral of Spells' one on each Twinchie and mounted them all onto different coloured scalloped squares and then onto a tall white card blank. And so you have it - my take on 'All things bright and beautiful' and my first ever Twinchies!