Stampin' Up Technique Class - More Fun With A Brayer

I love playing with the brayer and inks, and recently held a Stampin' Up! technique class where I introduced this fun technique. My aim was to de-mystify the technique and show that it can be suited to all abilities and styles. 

Experimenting with colour is one of the wonderful elements of the BRAYER  technique and for this card I was aiming to show that a smooth blending of the background colours is not always necessary to achieve an interesting atmosphere.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that your colours will loose their intensity and clarity if you overwork them. I have a rule to start with my lightest colour first and ALWAYS  leave some of the white background showing through. This allows the purity of any secondary colours to show through as well as blending them with the original light colour. 

Do I sound a bit confusing? Have a look at this card and see if you can work out what I mean. 

I really like the "sky" section where you can still see the brayer marks of some of the colours. I wanted to move away from them more blended  look and create a sense of movement and life in the scene. 

I have called this "Blue Moon" 

Can you see that I started with the Saffron on the top half of the card, leaving the lower portion White? Then I rolled on some Turquoise across the top and the base of the card - the difference being the Turquoise turns a greenish colour at the top but retains its Turquoise hues behind the UPSY DAISY and POCKET SILHOUETTES stamps. A small amount of Perfect Plum was applied in selected areas prior to stamping the images in Turquoise, Perfect Plum and Black. 

The detail shows the difference between SPONGING - the colour on the moon - and brayering. It's always fun to combine techniques. I have used Stampin' Up!® Whisper White card stock as the base of this card. I find it absorbs the colours a little and allows you time to "work" them if you choose. You would get a slightly different result when using Glossy White card stock.

I hope you will have a go using a Brayer - it is a very quick way to achieve nice results.

Until next time

Stay Crafty!

Imagine The Possibilities

I was demonstrating some technniques at a class the other night - specifically:

• Stampin' Write Marker direct to Rubber
• Masking and Sponging
• Creating depth by sponging

and I was inspired to take the example further and make a card. It was really strange how this card evolved over a number of days - the colours: Soft Suede, Whisper White, and Ruby Red (retired) sent me off on a journey of discovery to find what I had lying around that would be useful in the design.

I am enjoying the versatility that the Big Shot allows via the super Embossing Folders, and have found  "Square Lattice" (available in the Summer Mini) is fast becoming one of my favourites.

This card has all bits and pieces juxtaposed as I was on a mission to use up bits of card that were cluttering my desk. After deciding that I wanted to make an easel card I was presented with the problem of what to put on the inside of the card.

Some repetition of the texture on the front plus stamped images from one of Stampin' Up's!® Level 1 Hostess gifts - Punch Potpourri - and the design was coming together. It is so good being able to punch out the bird, flower and leaves using the 2-Step Bird Ex Large punch, as it saves loads of time.

I named this post "Imagine the Possibilities" and would like each of you reading it to think about the wonderful possibilities and opportunities YOU would have by becoming a Stampin' Up!® Demonstrator.  You can find lots of information about this on my Demonstrator website and if you'd like to have a chat about how this opportunity could fit into your life then please contact me any time.

 As I've started a new Challenge blog this week- "jac-inks Challenges", and have been thrilled to see some of you join us in our 2-weekly challenges, I thought I'd share the love around and enter a few new challenges myself.  I am entering this card in the following

CCEE Stampers - use your punches
Do You Stack Up? - Red Hot
Paper Play Challenge- Stamp It Out
Southern Girls Challenge - Dry Embossing

Until next time, stay crafty

Hugs