In the garden - mixed media card

 Hello, fellow crafters

I love my garden (mostly evergreen with a pop of colour here and there) and I love arum lilies (also called calla lilies). Today I am sharing a card featuring pink arum lilies.

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 This pretty Studio Light stamp has been sitting on my desk for quite some time, waiting for inspiration to do it justice. I knew I wanted to create a water-colour effect and a journal-style background. But don't be intimidated (I know many crafters feel intimidated by watercolour techniques - no watercolouring here. I used an ink squishing technique that I developed recently with heat-embossed images.

What I often do while waiting for the final inspiration to use a specific product, is to put the things I think I could use out on a side table next to my main desk. In time, ideas grow and then I know what I want to do. This card was finally inspired by the prompt on the Ujabule Art Journalling Facebook page: In the garden.

The process I followed was as follows:

1.  Masked the edges of a 13x13cm piece of watercolour paper with washi tape.

2. Brayered Distress Oxide salvaged patina to cover the unmasked square.

3. Brayered a small amount of Distress Oxide seedless preserves.

4. Splattered water onto the inked paper and allowed it to sit a few minutes before blotting the drops with a paper towel.

5. Heat-embossed the Studio Light calla lily stamp with white embossing powder onto watercolour paper.

6. Dabbed seedless grape and mowed lawn Distress oxide inks onto my glass mat and spritzed with water, to form watercolour ink. 

7. Roughly cut out the heat-embossed image and pressed it face down into the watercolour inks, with the flowers more or less in the seedless grapes and stems and leaves more or less on the green mowed lawn. When the image was dry, I used my finger to add more pink and green on selected parts of the image, for more intense colour in the centres of the flowers and on some parts of the leaves. Cut out, close to the edges of the image, with detail scissors.

8. Used seedless grape and salvaged patina inks to stencil in the background, using the Studio Light mask Birds and twigs.

9. Stamped some borders left, right and at the bottom, to "ground" my image.

10. Adhered the calla lily image with dimensional tape.

I hope you enjoyed your short visit.

Happy crafting, until next time.

Marie Smith