Valentine's Day preparations

My monthly article has been published on the Lavinia Stamps website :) [well, it was published a couple of weeks ago but OFSTED came to visit us at school which has impacted on my time and energy so apologies for not letting you know earlier!!]

With Valentine's Day just around the corner I designed a card suitable for my husband (so no fairies appear on this card!), although he's probably seen it on facebook so maybe I'd better make another one ;)

You can find the step by step photos and instructions for this card HERE if you're interested :)

adirondack inks and the gelli plate

It was the Happy Stampers rubber stamping festival yesterday and I had a fabulous time meeting up with loads of stamping friends (with no local stamp store anymore it's our twice yearly chance to touch base, other than on the internet) ...

... and shopping of course!  I also learnt a new technique.  It had never occurred to me to use my gelli plate with inks so I couldn't wait to try it out at home after Tracey, from Lavinia Stamps, had shown me.  She has made a youtube video, which you can watch here and I took some step by step photos for my third tag.

I apologise for the light, I took these photos this evening.  The beauty of the gelli plate is that you can see through it, so place a tag underneath and use this as a template for where to brayer and stamp.

After brayering with adirondack inks I stamped some Lavinia stamp images, using the same ink pads, then lined my tag up with the tag underneath the gelli plate.

Using a gelli plate gives a different texture to the stamped images.  I'm still learning about how much ink etc to apply so added some more colour using a sponge.

I used my spun sugar distress ink pad to add a pale pink to my tag as I wanted to enter this month's Lavinia Stamps challenge where the theme is 'add some pink'.  Since I'd used some distress ink I splashed some water on in order to lift some ink off.  The 'water' I used was from my water jar on the table, which I'd used to rinse my brushes off, so had effectively turned into watered down acrylic paint, but I do like the effect it gave!!

Tracey's new zen line of stamps are gorgeous and I bought a fair few with my birthday money!!  

I stamped the teasels onto the tag then stamped them onto some white paper so I could paper piece them......

....I just LoVe black and white imagery against a coloured background.

Thanks so, so much for sharing this technique with me Tracey, I just LoVe it!!  I'm entering this tag in this month's Lavinia Stamps Challenge, 'Add something pink'.