Clarity Berkshire - June's play away day

A couple of week's ago, I went to the second Clarity Berkshire workshop with Angela. It's taken a while to get the photos up, but better late than never!

We were using the Meadow Grasses stamp set - this was on my wishlist anyway, so really pleased to get this from the workshop, as well as getting some inspiration on what to do with it.

The first project was a panel card.

We used the bubble stencil to create the background, before overstamping. I went for some bright sunny colours, and a simple sentiment.

We also made a canvas - my first! I have a set of them in a bag upstairs, they've been there for ages now, but I haven't summoned up the time and courage to start using them. Maybe now I've tried it, it won't seem so scary!

The focal point is a card panel, coloured with distress inks and stamped with the meadow grasses again. We also used grunge paste through stencils on the canvas, spritzed on colour, and stamped. Then we played with various embellishments to finish it off.

I can't claim that it's perfect, but for a first attempt I'm pretty happy with this.






As well as the projects I finished, we had a chance to experiment with brushos and bursts - pigment powders that react with water to give some really great effects.

I stamped and heat embossed all my cards before using the pigments. You can also stamp over them once the card is dry.

The first one here is using the black brushos. You can see that it's made up of many colours. I didn't use enough to really show up the white embossed grasses, but I like the effects of the brusho.

This one is also brushos, a mixture of blues and purples.

I love the patterns that formed in the bottom right section. The water moves the pigment around so it's very random, although you can direct it a little, and take colour out again by blotting.

The final one uses bursts. These are much finer, a powder rather than granules, so give a softer effect. They also seem to avoid the resist embossing better (from my sample of one).

Again, you get a lovely mix of colours.

I think I shall have to be tempted into getting a set - not sure which yet. I think I prefer the bursts but I like both, and the brushos are a lot less expensive! Watch this space.

So thanks to Angela for a fun day and lots of new things to try. I'm looking forward already to the next one in September.

In the meantime, I'm getting excited about the Clarity Retreat in July - two days of crafting with Barbara Gray! Can't wait!