shepherd's purse

Yesterday  was the Clarity east workshop with Janet Pring at Bawburgh, mainly using the new shepherd's purse stamp set.
This was the first card we made, masking off the central oblong, sponging with distress inks (milled lavender here), then stamping the word stamp with the masking tape still in place to create a background. Two of the stamps stamped over the top in black archival ink, seed pods coloured with pencils and I bleached out the colour on the flowers. Matching pink and green mats, and a fairly quick card to do - especially if you are like me and leave out the wiggly lines that Janet loves to add round the edges!
The following cards were actually done in the afternoon, using my current obsession, brusho - I was delighted to get the email mentioning this, and both Moira and I turned up with our own boxes of little pots, meaning that we got to make a lot more backgrounds than the others - we did share though!

 The one on the right is my version of Janet's sample card  actually, the left one I masked off the centre and added brusho to make the background to the stamp instead of inking as we did with the first card. The right hand one also shows the difference in colour when you blot the first piece of card with a second piece to get two for the price of one, I used the second print to stamp on.
This one I only used the black brusho powder, which gives a lovely muted multicolour effect.






The last two were actually done in the morning, and use a deer stamp and a couple of bullrush stamps from Janet's collection of foliage stamps.
The sample card was coloured with pencils and blending solution after outlining as landscape with a fine liner pen - not my scene at all! I used distress inks and the traditional torn paper to make my landscape, and coloured the bit below the deer stamp to look like water instead of leaving it white for a greeting as Janet had. I also sprayed some water over this bit and blotted it with kitchen roll. I did use the pen to extend the stamp to the side of the card to stop it floating in mid air between the rushes.

I did try the pencil technique - it was far quicker to use inks than pencils - and was not very impressed - probably I didn't use enough pencil in the first place as I couldn't get the blended effect I was aiming for in the sky: it did work a lot better with the water though, where I had used a lot more pencil. I cut this one down to fit a square card, which anchored the deer rather better - some of us did wonder about the designer's artistic licence in having two stags so close to each other and not fighting! Moira reckoned that they had fought and the one on the left had lost...............