Today I'd like to share a simple technique that I used with my new Cornish Heritage Farms Vintage Butterflies set. While I'm a huge fan of patterned papers, once in a while it's fun to go back to one's stamping roots. I started with some watercolor crayons in a magenta, purple, and royal blue. (You can use any two or three colors that are similar enough not to get muddy when they combine, and you could use water-based markers or even Twinkling H2O's if you prefer--any water-based medium should work.)
I started by spritzing the largest butterfly stamp with plain water and coloring directly to the rubber with the watercolor crayons. (You might have to spritz more than once to get the color to stay if you are using newer rubber that hasn't been conditioned/roughed up a bit yet.) After coloring the butterfly, mist the rubber again and stamp. You can re-mist and re-stamp a few times before needing to add more color to the rubber, though each subsequent stamping will be a bit lighter than the last. Also, I always start with my largest object in any collage background. If you can fit the larger objects onto the paper in a pleasing way, it's simple to work the smaller ones into the spaces left over. I stamped one large butterfly on the Natural White cardstock as well, saving it to use later with the sentiment.
Next, because I was using a mid-toned Kraft background, I added a bit more contrast by coloring in the unstamped spaces lightly with a white Prismacolor colored pencil. Although I didn't take a picture of my next step, I used the Canvas backgrounder, along with Antique Linen Distress ink, to add more texture in the background and tone down the butterflies so that they wouldn't compete with the main image.
I stamped the quotation in a magenta ink on vanilla cardstock before trimming it with a Labels 1 die, and matting it with some Memory Box Raspberry cardstock. For the Wisteria band, I stamped the music backgrounder in Versamark. . . which didn't show up on a soy-based paper, of course!(Ellen says that the new shimmery Versamark pads show up better on the Memory Box cardstock; I haven't tried one yet.) I then heat-embossed with clear embossing powder, and then sponged on some wisteria ink to accentuate the background. On the butterfly, I used a small glue pen to color glue only in the clear areas, and then accented with glitter. Ribbon is some May Arts silk.
If you try this golden-oldie technique, I'd love to see a link! Thank you for visiting,
Debbie Olson, for the CLASSroom
