FOUR BACKGROUNDS

 I must admit that I am weirdly intrigued and attracted to the six ornaments stamp in the Ornamental Envelopes set on page 40 of the Mini Catalog. This stamp is just cool -- and FUN to color and play with.

So intrigued am I with the stamp that I decided to spend some time playing with it, trying to get different looks.

I ended up with four different cards to share with you, all of which are included in this blog post. I have pictured them in the order that I had the varying ideas and then made up the cards. I will explain each one.

The first card, I'd decided to stamp the ornaments in VersaMark ink and use a glittery gold embossing powder to emboss them. 

With embossing, it's always fun to do a resist. So, that's what I did with this card, using three different color inks: Pear Pizzazz, Calypso Coral and So Saffron. Now, looking at those colors, do you see any potential disasters? Two of the inks, So Saffron and Calypso Coral, are close enough to be considered primary colors (the actual primary colors are red, yellow and blue), which are famous for playing well together. Yay! Throw in the Pear Pizzazz, which in essence is a secondary color (green), and you have a tendency to develop mud, since primary and secondary colors don't like to play together all that well without some great care. They tend to create some kind of a brown. Now, unless that's the look you're going for, yuk.

Using a stamping sponge, I started with the So Saffron, laying down that color randomly. I then followed with the Calypso Coral. So far, so good. Then comes the Pear Pizzazz. CAREFUL! When adding the green, it needs to be pretty much a solo performance, keeping it as much away from the first two colors as possible. You can see in the lower right corner I wasn't completely successful.

When doing a resist, it's fun and important to go over the colors a few times until you get the density of color you want. 

The next card is much more iffy in that I used the same color inks, but in a much less controlled way. I scribbled with Stampin' Write Markers (the brush end) all over a Clear Bock E. The markers are fairly subtle looking on the block, so I couldn't really tell where each color was going. 

Once I thought I had the block covered with ink fairly well, I spritzed it gently with water and stamped the block straight down onto a piece of Whisper White cardstock. This tends to be pretty tricky in that it is sometimes difficult to get the block centered on the paper just right. Also, sometimes the ink starts to drip before you get it upside down.

This is a very random way of doing a background because you never know what you're gonna get -- just like a box of chocolates! Since the green was an eager player in this background, I ended up with more muddy looking spots than I would have liked. 

After the background was dry (I used the Heat Tool to hurry this along), I stamped the six ornaments in black ink. 

While it looked O K . . . I wasn't crazy about it. So I took a few of my Stampin' Blends, namely Light Granny Apple Green, Light Calypso Coral and Dark So Saffron, and colored in the ornaments.

For the third card, I used ink pads, Flirty Flamingo, Mango Melody and Granny Apple Green, directly onto the Clear E Block. I was careful, however, about my placement of the green. I put the yellow in the middle of the block, surrounded on each end by the "red" and the green because both red and green play nicely with the yellow in the center. Thus, if there is any overlapping, it will probably be OK. And it was.

Again, as in the second card, once I'd had the inks applied directly to the block, and, after spritzing it with water, I stamped it onto the Whisper White piece. I love it when it happens to boast little white splotches that have no ink. To me, that addss a lot of interest.

This time, since there was lots of bright color, I simply stamped the ornaments in black ink and didn't do any additional coloring. I did, however, add a few of the Gilded Gems (page 157, Annual Catalog) to the centers of ornaments.

One piece of advice here: if you are doing a technique in which you spritz with water, no matter how careful you are, the cardstock tends to buckle somewhat. When you are adhering this piece to another layer of cardstock, always make sure your adhesive comes as close to the edges as you can  to help the piece lie as flat as possible.

Finally, the last card was a ton of fun to do. I took my teflon craft sheet and used the same three ink pads as in the previous card, Flirty Flamingo, Mango Melody and Granny Apple Green, by inking a splotch of each of the inks on the craft sheet. I then spritzed the spots with water. 

Then comes the fun part. After spritzing it lightly with water, small dots of colors will develop. Just take your Whisper White cardstock and carefully drop a corner of it onto one of the colors. Repeat. Use the Heat Tool to dry these areas. Then continue to introduce ink in the same way, drying in between. If you con't dry between each layer, it will get all muddy and run together. Not attractive at all. As the ink puddles disperse a little, tip up a portion of your cardstock and dab it into the droplets to get a few random drops across your piece.

When doing this technique, no two backgrounds will ever come out the same. In fact, some may not even be as pleasing as others. It all depends on the muddiness of a primary and secondary color blending too much, as well as the lack of dotted and separated areas.

Since this background was so interesting in its own right, I simply added the six ornaments in black ink. 

Now that you've seen all four of my cards with the disparate backgrounds, do you have a favorite? Do you have any similar experiences you would like to share with us? Any other comments?

Ornament-al

Smiles.