Window Sheets and Watercolour

It seems my Mojo is back, let's hope it hangs around for a while!  Each week I look at a variety of challenges and if the mojo is around will give them a go.  This week two in particular caught my eye:  Less Is More's challenge this week is to use Acetate, and as soon as I saw this I just knew exactly what I wanted to do.  It is a technique that I saw at the Stampin' Up! Regional Training Day last year.  I knew the butterfly from Strength and Hope would be perfect for this, the only decision then was what colour scheme ... over to Colour Q Challenge which this week was to use Kraft (aka Crumb Cake), Cherry Cobbler, Kiwi Kiss (in my case Old Olive as Kiwi Kiss has retired and I used all mine up), Tangerine Tango and White.

I tried to keep the card fairly simple, and to that end have left off a sentiment, sometimes I think it is nice to have an all purpose card. Sometimes on a card like this I will just stamp the sentiment on the inside once I know what I want to use it for.  Now onto how the card was done.

Firstly I got a piece of Water Colour Paper and sprayed it all over both sides until it was quite wet and let the water sink into the paper.  I gently blotted it on some paper towel to remove the extra water so there was no surface water on the paper.  I carefully stamped the image of the butterfly onto the wet paper using Cherry Cobbler, holding the stamp down for about 5-10 seconds to help the ink run a little.  From here you can either let the water colour paper dry naturally, or if you are like me and itching to get on with the card, you can use your heat tool.   If you do use a heat tool make sure you turn the paper over as it dries and dry the back as well as the front so it won't curl up unevenly.  I then spritzed with Champagne Shimmer Mist (Shimmer Paint added to some rubbing alcohol) to make it sparkle.

To give the butterfly definition you then stamp the image onto some acetate or Stampin' Up! Window Sheets, you need to use StazOn ink for that to make the image permanent.  This is held in place at one corner with a brad, allowing it to move on the card.  I had cut the Window Sheet to size and then used my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig (SAMJ) to position the butterfly just where I wanted it.

 Now, I know Less Is More is about clean and simple cards, but I felt that it was just a bit too plain, so thought I would try an additional acetate layer.  For this one I again used StazOn and my SAMJ to position the flourish stamp that comes in the Strength and Hope set into the corners.  I first saw this stamp used as a corner stamp by my friend Leonis Schroder.  I did it on a second layer to test out whether it was "too much" or not though you could do it on the same layer as the butterfly if you were confident!

I hope you like my creation, and are inspired to try this technique out for your self.  You don't have to use a single solid colour for your main stamp, using your Stampin' Write Markers to colour directly onto your stamp gives some stunning effects.

Happy Stamping