Trees and mantles

Hello again. Today's card is one I made for a friend's birthday. It's a similar technique to what Barbara did on classroom last time.

I started with a piece of water colour card. I spritzed card with water. i then inked the mantle with rusty hinge distress ink and added little bits of aged mahogany and mustard seed. I stamped on copy paper first and then on card twice getting a more faded effect the second time. I did same with the other mantle, but this time I added a bit of peeled paint. The last mantle i stamped in peeled paint. As I had spritzed paper and the inks are water based they ran slightly giving a more mottled effect.

Using potting soil archival ink I stamped the trunks on mantles. I added the slopes with the border stamp on same set. I inked with rusty hinge and dabbed a little mustard seed and peeled paint.

Then using the fab stencil brushes from Clarity stamp, I added some shading at bottom of card with peeled paint. At the top, I added shading with aged mahogany. The birds I drew in brown micron pen.

I matted topper on Tim Holtz co'ordinations craft core card. However the card looked bare like this so I decided to add some twine and jute. I coloured the jute with peeled paint distress ink and spritzed with water for a more even colour. Then I thought that it still needed something as it was still bare. So I thought I could add some leaves from autumn set.

I wanted to use shrink plastic but i'm impatient so I thought I'd try to use promarkers to stamp with. ................And it worked! And it dries a lot quicker than archival. So I cut out 3 of the larger leaves and punched a hole before I heated them. Using jump rings I connected all 3 together and threaded twine and jute through.

Finally I was happy with finished result and it seems so was the recipient!

All for now, Theresa xx