Lamdscape

Hello Bloggers

Today I'm going to show you how to create a landscape using one ink pad, a few stamps and some torn paper. It's a card I taught my stamping class , I promised therefore that I would post instructions so they can refer to it for future reference.

I would like to thank Barbara Grey of Clarity stamps for all her inspiration she has given me over the years.

Things you will need:

Splodge Matt (available from Claritystamps see link below.)
Encaustic art card.A5 size with 3cm trimmed from a short edge and long edge.I do this so I know I will have "space" to matt and layer and mount on to a A5 card.
Brayer,  I use a speedball as I find this the best.
Selection of stamps, I've used A big tree, small tree, Balloon's, and flock of birds.All my stamps are from Clarity.Link here. http://shop.claritystamp.co.uk/
Copy paper
Adirondack Earthtones dye based ink pad:Meadow.
Small punch to cut mask from post it. I used a x-cut punch. This produces a 2.3 cm circle for my sun.
Masking tape
Ruler.

Here is a picture of the finished card. Matt and layered ready to use.

Here I begun to assemble all my things I will need to do the card

 

 

 I now have my card and trimmed to the required size.

 

 Tear of a piece of masking tape and adhere to your clothes a few times to remove excess sticky. Attach to the card covering about a 1cm edge of the card. .Do this to all 4 sides as in the photo.

Roll you brayer over the ink pad giving the brayer a good coating.
Roll your brayer over the splodge mat to evenly distribute the ink over the mat.

 

 Get a piece of copy or scarp paper and scrunch it up into a tight ball then un-scrunch it and flatten it out. Roll your prayer along the "ripples" the impressions will be left on the brayer.

 

 Covering the top part of the picture, so you have about 2.5cm of the bottom exposed run your brayer along the exposed part of your picture creating the lake.  You might need to add a bit of pressure to get the effect.Clean brayer.

Take the piece of paper covering the top part, and put it back down so its now covering the water. You want it so there is a thin line of water exposed.

 

 Here you can see a close up of the covered water with just the top exposed.

To create the "hills" I find the easiest way is to use a ruler and tear the paper along the edge of the ruler . Moving the ruler creates the hills and vallys. Practise a few times until you are happy with your hills.

I now have my hills. Once you are happy with them keep them and use it a few times and make loads of cards.

I now attach my hill mask and after re-inking my brayer ink in my first hills. By moving the mask slightly and WITHOUTre-inking brayer you can do another hill which would appear to be in the distance.

Leaving the water still covered and the hill's now in place I now punch my sun and place it in the "sky "area of my picture.

I have now re-inked my brayer and have actually done a wheelie on the left hand side of the brayer. I now roll back and forth across the picture gradually bringing the brayer down towards the hills.

As you can now see from this photo the sky is darker at the top and gets lighter towards the hills. This is because of the wheelie that you did, and this is what you are trying to achieve.

OK we have got to this stage, with the mask removed. What we need to do now is put in the piece of land at the front of the picture to give it some depth.

Retrieving your hill mask cover up the bottom left of you picture and go across it with your brayer. Be careful not to go across the other bit of the lake. You might want to do this a few times as you want it relatively dark but don't go overboard. re-ink brayer if necessary.

I now have my piece of land in the foreground. See the bit of green to the right of the piece of land in the water, that was with the brayer and I did not cover up the water sufficiently,  you have been warned lol. Now we are going to stamp in the details.

Using the photo as a guide, ink up your small tree stamp and blot it on a piece of scrap paper. the secret here is as it in the distance you want it quite faint, so blot it twice and then stamp on the picture. Without re-inking invert the stamp and stamp in the water so you get e reflection do this twice more using the photo as a guide.

Now ink up your balloon stamp and blot it once on the scrap paper and stamp twice on the picture using the photo as a guide. The second stamped balloon will appear fainter , you want this as it gives the illusion of being further away. Thus automatically adding depth to the art work.

 Now ink up the flock of birds and stamp twice on to scrap paper and then stamp on the picture in the middle of the sun. Again the fainter the better so again you might want to press a little harder to get a good impression
Now ink up the larger of the balloons and stamp once on to scrap paper and stamp on to your artwork..
 Do the same for the big tree, using the photo as a guide.

Ink up the big tree again and using the very edge of the stamp add some foliage to the bottom left corner where the big tree is., being careful not go over into the water.

The finished piece matt and layered and attached to card.

Enjoy

Andy xx

wax resist

Hello Bloggers

I am going to show you today how to do the wax resist technique using your embossing folders. Its a great technique and offers another use for all you embossing folders.

Things you will need:

Iron (I use my encaustic art Iron) You can use a ordinary Iron without the steam and set it to maybe a cotton setting.
Wax paper I use waxwrap which I gor from my locol kitchen shop.
Distress inks
Coated card stock again I used encaustic art card as I find this the best.
Heat proof mat
Splodge mat
ink blending tool/brayer
embossing folder
die cutting machine ( I used Garnd Caliber)

Here in the first picture I begun to assemble the things I will need for this project. Put on the iron so its ready and heated.

Here I have cut a piece of the wax paper and put it inside the embossing folder. I will mention here that the grand impreesabilities also work well with this technique.

As I'm using the Spellbinders Grand Calibur this is the sandwich I'm using for this paticular folder. So raspberry plate (D adaptor plate), embossing folder with wax paper inside, and A plate  If you are using a different embossing folder or machine check your die cutting machine instructions  for the appropriate sandwich.

Pas the sandwich through your machine.

Take out the wax paper and sandwich it between 2 sheets of encaustic card. With your pre-heated Iron applying gentle pressure glide the iron over the sandwich ensuring equal coverage over the whole area. About a minute is good.

Once Ironed separate the two pieces of card and get your ink applicator / brayer and distress inks and start applying ink to the surface of the card.

Keep applying the ink until you are happy with the depth of colour. As I'm right handed I used a piece of folded kitchen towel under the fingers of my left hand to keep them clean. Move on to a darker colour as necessary. Here i used Worn Lipstick and Barn Door.

Here you can see the patten emerging and the wax resisting the distress inks.

Here you have the two finished pieces ready to use on your project.

Thank you for looking and hope you like this tutorial.

Hugs

Andy xx




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3lx4mLDl4k    Video tutorial

Layers

Hello Peeps

I'm going to show you how to do a card that I saw Barbara Grey of +claritystamps  do on Create and Craft and which I
did with my stamping group on Saturday 26th January and I promised that I would put up the instructions  So here they are.

You will need:
Stamps  x 3
Archival Permanant ink pad Sepia
Stamp cleaner
Clarity Handle / Acrylic Block
Clarity Silk Card/ Encaustic Art Card
Post-it-Notes.
Versamark ink pad
Big and Juicy ink pad in Foliage.
Speedball Brayer
Splodgemat

 

 
  Here is a picture of the finished card as you can see it looks as though there are three layers to the card. Here's how it's done.

 
1) Here I have gathered a selection of stamps, archival sepia permanent ink pad and a clarity handle in which to mount the stamp, and stamp cleaner.
All the stamps used are by Clarity stamps

2) Here I have now stamped my chosen images on to my card and blotted it two or three times to make sure the ink is dry

3) You now need to cover your images with post it notes if you have a look at the picture you will notice that the middle post-it-note is slightly overlapping the top and bottom ones. This is important to get the desired effect at the end. Trim the post-it-notes as necessary.

4) Here as I mentioned above you can see the slight overlap

5) The white area can now be stamped randomly using the versamark. Use the same stamps as effectively this will be your back ground. So do all the white areas of the card.

Now we will colour the background. Firstly if you have a look at the ink pad you will notice that its a "rainbow" ink pad. I'm going to be loading up my brayer from the brown end and even then I eill only be loading about a third of the brayer. Once I have loaded the brayer I will use the splodge mat to remove excess ink.

Here you can see that I have removed some of the excess ink and because I have rolled it on my splodge mat it will stay wetter for longer so should I need more ink then I will just use whats on my mat.
Notice the way the brayer starts up in the top right hand corner, as I roll I will gradually roll towards the middle of the card.

So having done one side I turned it around and did the other corner, using the ink on the splodge mat as necessary. Notice the white area running diagonally through the middle of the card. This again will add to the overall effect of the finished art piece.

Next step now is to put in the "layers". As you can see I have removed the top post-it-note. Get a make-up sponge and form it in to a mushroom type ball and then gently dab on the ink pad REMOVE excess ink and then very lightly go around the edge of the post-it where it touching the white area.

Here is a close up of where I dabbed. Notice the amount of ink there's hardly any there you just want a slight hint of colour. Remove the bottom post-it and do the same again.

Once completed and the post-it removed it will give the illusion that the middle layer is lying on top of the other two.

The finished art work Matt and layered

Job Done. Thank you Barbara for your inspiration.

The Next Level

You will need in addition to the above
Detail Clear embossing powder.

As you can see from the instructions above I've numbered them only so far. You can take this concept a stage further with the addition of clear embossing powder.

So follow steps 1-5 above, go over the area with an anti-static bag. When you get to stamping with the versamark apply detail clear embossing powder and heat set. I would do this in stages rather then trying to do all in one go, believe me it wont happen lol. Notice the post-it still in place don't worry if you get powder on them just heat set as normal.

I then used a word stamp by clarity and randomly stamped all over again notice the post-it notes still in place. I used the archival sepia.

Begin by cleaning away the excess sepia ink with a piece of tissue.
With a applicator and splodge mat i then used a selection of distress ink pads to colour the background.I used Antique linen, Vintage Photo, and finished with Walnut stain. I would not recommend using a brayer as you do not want to get permanent ink onto your brayer. I started by going all over with the antique linen and gradually moving out to the edges with the other two colours.

 So here is the finishes art work after the distressing. notice now how the wording has disappeared behind the embossing adding dimension to your work.

A close up of one of the corners with all the different layers now in place.

The finished art work Matt and layered and mounted onto a card front.