Yesterday1, Charming, Yesterday 2

Yesterday1, Charming, Yesterday 2
Originally uploaded by lubsy1uk

I felt in a vintagey mood whilst making these cards. I started with the backgrounds - just playing around really. I had a bar of beeswax and thought I'd apply it all over the card and take it from there.

I just got my heat gun out and put the bar of beeswax to the card and let the heat melt the wax to the card while I rubbed it over. It melted quickly and covered the card quite easily. Then, while the wax was still hot, I inked up a script stamp with Versamark for the two "Yesterday" cards and pressed into the still warm wax to leave a slight impression.

When the wax had cooled completely I rubbed a little bronze mica powder into the impression and polished with a soft cloth. Where the impression was the powder clung into. For the "Charming" card I stamped a swirl stamp into the warm wax and went over with bronze mica powder. The overall effect had quite an aged feel about it, which was perfect for the images I'd chosen.

The images were all rub-on transfer images which went really well with the aged effect of the background and I completed the cards with lace embellishments and buttons.
Available on my Flickr site for trade :-)

Something Fishy ATCs

Something Fishy ATCs
Originally uploaded by lubsy1uk

I was experimenting with background techniques and in the past when I've taken the brayer to the inkpad and brayered it over my card/paper, the result is a smudged muddy effect of colours - not really what I want. So this time I thought let me try putting the card on top of the rainbow inkpad and brayer over the top - well the results were far better and each band of colour was clearly visible and bright.

My next thought was, "what if I don't want to see the separate bands of colour, but instead want to see the colours merge into each other flawlessly?" So I remembered water colour techniques and I dampened my card stock with water and then laid it on top of the ink pad and brayered over it with the brayer and the result was beautiful - jewel like colours bleeding seamlessly into one another, without any muddiness or lines. This is exactly what I was hoping for and when I looked at each card I saw an underwater theme emerge and thought of tropical fishes in the colours of the Mediterranean seas.

I added a bit of dimension to each card by stamping bubble wrap on to the cards with Versamark and then dusting over with mica pearl powders. The shimmer added depth to the cards.

I had some fish greeting wrap from PaperChase, that I'd saved from ages ago and thought that would be perfect, so I cut the fishes out and stuck them on to the backgrounds with foam pads and then added some Beadz Accents to represent the sea bed and coral. To complete the scene I dotted air bubbles to the fish with the end of a pencil dipped into white gesso

I'm really pleased with this series and now they're available for trade -get yours before they swim away! :-D