Leafy prints

If you follow my work on here, you will know from time to time that I get very inspired by the lovely leaves of the macleaya cordata plants in our garden. I was sitting in the garden on Monday and the leaves in the sunshine looked like they had been dusted with fine gold mica powder, they had a gorgeous delicate sheen. I felt it was time for a creative leafy session. So on Monday I picked some leaves and inked the reverse sides with dye inks for some delicate leaf prints, using my Speedball brayer to gently press the detail into the paper. I used the plume poppy leaves, geraniums, hop leaves and ferns so ended up with some quite varied results. I sprayed some of the prints with walnut ink, my old glimmer mists and some Cosmic Shimmer sprays and I was really pleased with the way it made the ink bleed gently. I also added some leaf stamping on some of the pages. This was results of a couple of hours leaf printing.

I was really delighted with one of the prints that I will be keeping to make into a project just for me as it reminds me of that golden sheen on the leaves that inspired me in the first place.

I loved the way the gold spray collected in the veins of the leaf. If you click on the picture you can get a better look.

Here are a couple of the designs of card I made with the sheets of printing. The first uses a similar print to the one above. I lost the top of the print, so had to crop it a little. I added a DoCrafts sentiment and some Impression Obesssion die cuts in chocolate brown card.

These next two use one of the sheets like a masterboard and I used 3 x 3 inch squares to make the prints go as far as possible.

This panel used fern prints which I overstamped with the fern from the Chocolate Baroque Wild meadow set, using shades of Versafine ink. I added another DoCrafts sentiment and more of the IO leaf die cuts.

The second card uses the same sentiment and an Impression Obsession Gingko leaf die. I love Gingko leaves and I am hoping we can find space to plant a Gingko tree in our garden before too long. I added a little Vintage Photo DI to the edges of my leafy squares.

I was very pleased with how quickly these cards came together in the course of one evening once I had made the leafy prints and I still have plenty of material to make more cards and projects with.

Elaine

Ferny cards

I have been playing about a bit with trying to teach myself to use a brayer and the background for the ferny panels on these cards were brayered onto matt card in citrus and lettuce Adirondack inks. The larger fern stamp is from the Elusive Images Wild Meadow set and the others from an unknown clear stamp set I bought second-hand. I have heat embossed some of the ferns in two colours of Cosmic Shimmer embossing powder. Both cards are backed on to a Sandy Lion scrapbook paper called Green Wilderness.

The panel was cut out with oval nestabilites sets and mounted on a brown shape in the next size up in the scalloped set. This larger card also incorporates a background of pale green card sprayed with Cosmic Shimmer Cosimic Glimmer spray in Golden Mint - a delicious colour. The down side of this card is that I used a peel-off greeting for speed as I needed to get the card in the post and I am not totally happy with the result.

This smaller square card uses the same materials. The panels were cut out with one of the nestabilites label sets and mounted on a brown shape in the next size up in the set. This one has a heat embossed greeting from the EI Elephant Paisley plate, using a Cosmic Simmer powder. This is one of my favourite sentiment stamps, it is so stylish. I am much happier with this combination.

I have a long way to go with the brayering, but I feel I have made a start.

My favourite rubber stamp companies - 1

Today I am posting a card that uses some of my favourite rubber stamps from one of my favourite rubber stamp companies - this uses the Wild Meadow set from Elusive Images. I was really helped with this card by a step-by-step tutorial on Glenda Waterworth's blog. http://artylicious.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/meadow-faery-card-step-by-step/ The dragonfly and sentiment stamp are not EI stamps.

I built up this image on white card, using loads of different inks, a mixture of dye, pigment, chalk and the odd bit of metallic. The dragonfly was stamped with Blue Lagoon Versafine and had a little clear stickles added to the wings. I heat embossed the sentiment in Cosmic Shimmer powder and then matted three times to add definition.

The card was for a very good friend's birthday.

Hope you are having a good day - the sun is shining here!