It’s all in the Sentiment

Not only was I lucky enough to win the Claritystamp Challenge Blog in March and receive a lovely £50 voucher to spend on their beautiful stamps, I was also invited to be guest designer for their May challenge – It’s all in the Sentiment.  I was absolutely delighted! 

I picked the Gandhi quote “Be the change that you wish to see in the world” which we had received with the new design club a few months ago.  Using a technique I’d seen on Darlene’s Design blog, I sponged Tim Holtz distress ink, peacock feathers, onto the Clarity card.  I then used the clear Versamark inkpad to stamp on top of the card and embossed it with clear powder.  Using an old black dye based inkpad I rubbed the pad over the top and finally gave it a polish with a tissue which brought the clear writing to the surface.  It was then cut out using a die-cut and placed onto another piece of Clarity card which had been “cling-filmed”.  This is the technique when you brayer over the Clarity card with the ink, spritz a piece of clingfilm with water, lay it on the card and squidge it 🙂  Once it’s dry you get some really lovely effects.  So, that was the sentiment ready to go.

Nothing goes through amazing change like a butterfly so using the Claritystamp butterfly from the pretty petals kit I stamped three onto a piece of Theuva card.  Using Promarkers to colour in the butterflies, all slightly differently, I picked colours that toned with the background of the sentiment.  This is the first piece of colouring that I’ve been really happy with and used all the techniques I’ve learned from watching Barbara in the classroom.  Using a blending pen gives you such beautiful shading.

I masked off the butterflies and used the small leafy swirl stamp, again with the peacock feather inkpad, to create a background.  A bit of “ink, blot, plot” so that it didn’t overshadow the butterflies.  A toning edge down the card using the wide end of the Promarker pen to finish it off. 

Everything was then mounted onto an 8×8 card and I even added a bit of bling with turquoise gems.

I’m absolutely delighted with the end result and being asked to take part as a guest designer was thrilling.  It made me push myself a wee bit more and try something a little different for me – which is no bad thing!

I hope you like it too.  If you’re visiting from the Claritystamp Challenge blog, thanks for coming to take a look, and good luck with this month’s challenge.