Winter Blues

I decided to start entering blog challenges again wow!  I have been so busy lately and the amount of time I have been able to devote to crafting has been limited boo hoo!  I have found a couple of challenges which give you two weeks to enter, so that is much better for me!  
I have made this card for the Less is More challenge which asks for Winter Blues and also the Artful Times Challenge where the brief is just for shades of blue.
I used Stampin Up lovely as a Tree stamp set, which is my favourite.  The background is made using the masking tape technique, which I really love with these trees, the inks are Wisteria Wonder, Ballet Blue and Bashful Blue.  The trees are then stamped in Night of Navy. I love how the masking tape gets less tacky the more you use it, creating a slightly different effect every time!  Hope you enjoy looking as much as I did creating. 

Painting with bleach!

This is a technique I really enjoy.  I made a square mask, this one has a 53mm aperture, but you can make it any size to suit your stamps or projects.  I have a selection of stamp freebies from magazines, as they are all 53 mm square, that's what I cut! The rest of the project is really easy, lay the mask onto your card blank and secure with low tack tape then simply ink the middle aperture in any water based colour of your choice. Stamp your design in black archival, or stayzon ink. If you don't use a permanent ink here, the bleach will take out the lines and spoil your design.  Using ordinary household bleach (I watered mine down a little as it seemed too thick to paint with) "paint" out the part of the design you want to be white. (Actually, the bleach doesn't make the area true white, it just leaves a slight tinge.)  In this case I chose her face and just picked out some highlights in the feather. The rest of the card is up to you! I mounted the smaller card and layered onto a larger background to give this card to my sister in law for her birthday.

Here are a few of the smaller cards I have made using the same technique, they are very quick to make, which is quite satisfying.  You can just do one layer, directly onto your card blank which makes it cheaper for posting! These ones are about 3.5 inch square.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these cards, thank you for looking!





  Any questions about this technique, please message me, I'll be glad to help!