Sending Sunshine

Wasn’t it glorious to see some sunshine last weekend?  It gives me so much more energy and impetus to go and do something when it’s bright outside.  My card this week, together with the ATC I made for the Visible Image ATC swap for March, was inspired by the bright sunshine lighting up the daffs in the garden.  The theme for the swap was “Flora & Fauna” so the Golden Daffodils stamp fit the bill perfectly.

I wanted to try out my recent purchase of some Tim Holtz Distress Stain sprays.  They have been around for years but I’ve only just gotten around to purchasing some.  To begin, I stamped and heat embossed the daffs on my card and ATC and then applied masking fluid onto the flowers and stems.

After leaving them to dry naturally, I sprayed with Mustard Seed, Broken China and Cracked Pistachio stains and set them aside to dry.

To help remove the masking fluid, I used a glue eraser, which I think is the same stuff that plimsoll soles were made from when I was at school.  I use my eraser quite a lot as it’s handy for lifting wayward ink stains from a card!

As I hadn’t used watercolour paper, just my regular craft card, some of the stain had seeped into the flower areas but I wasn’t particularly bothered by that.  I didn’t want to reactivate the seeped blotches though so I coloured the flowers with alcohol markers.

To finish the card, I added some texture by applying translucent stencil paste through the new Radiate stencil and set this aside to dry.

Once the paste was dry enough to hold its shape but still a little tacky, I applied Comic Shimmer Pixie Sparkles with a dry paintbrush onto the paste to create some sunshine rays.

To add a more subtle texture to the ATC, I used the Bubbles & Fizz stencil and some white pigment ink and blended circles into the background to create a bokeh effect. 

I love how both of these cards turned out. The sparkle on the stencil paste varies immensely as to how the light catches it.