My Paper Corner

Happy 1st Blog Birthday!  Has it really been a whole year since I started on this new journey into blogland!  Yesterday was my blog’s first birthday ... I've enjoyed the experience and loved being able to enter card challenges from all over the world and chuffed to have been picked for mentions in two.  So on to today's card - this an open card, I'll add a sentiment later when I know who it's for. I've got a long list of different techniques I want to try one day and when I saw the current challenge at  Back to Basics and Beyond  was Salt Technique (which happens to be on my list) I decided to play along. I tried using course and fine sea salt after I had applied a watercolour layer of brusho colours.  The multi coloured & blue panels used course sea salt and the green panel fine sea salt. Must admit I was expecting more dramatic results, may be it wasn't wet enough or may be I needed to add more salt, either way I ended up with more subtle effect

Sharing another card made with some more of my new purchases, another set of Woodware stamps by Jane Gill, this has five single countryside stems plus a sentiment.  It's great the stylised stems are all separate, makes layout placement totally your choice and the open outlines ideal for extra doodling or zentangle ... one day I'll try that. I started with a Distress Oxide background using picked raspberry, cracked pistacio & spiced marmalade inks added direct to watercolour card with a blending tool before spritzing with water and leaving to dry naturally.  Once the stems were stamped & embossed I've added more colour direct from the ink pads with a water brush to highlight some of the open outlines. A pretty stitched scalloped aperture was die cut from plain card and mounted over the top.  Added three thin strips of leftover background to the top corner and a hand cut sentiment white embossed on black card with three little coloured dots to add to the flow

My first post for 2019 and I'm sharing a card made with some new purchases ... I've finally bought some Distress Oxides so had a play and created an inky background.  Using three colours (spiced marmalade, cracked pistachio & squeezed lemonade) I decided to do a combination of inking on and through a stencil mask with a bit of water spritzing as well.  I quite like that the colours stay on top of each other without affecting the colours underneath and it's definitely a lovely chalky finish. Another new purchase was the Woodware birthday grid stamp by Jane Gill, I do like the grid arrangement of all the sentiments leaving two spaces so you can add other images to suit.  I've added social media type die cuts as this is a card for a male who's always on his mobile phone 😊.  Final touch was randomly stamping a filmstrip down one side and adding #smile in the corner. I've used -  5x7 white card base Distress Oxide Inks on  Clarity Stencil Card That Sp