Happy Easter

I just wanted to share a couple of projects I made for Easter, a card and a present for my mum. Both very simple!

I had a thought the other day - what if I did the smooshing in plastic technique (still don't know if it has a proper name!), but instead of water based inks spritzed with water, I used sharpies and spritzed with IPA? And guide post number 6 of the Creative Sandbox Way is "ask what if?", so I had to have a play and find out!

I was kind of hoping to get more vibrant colours than the dye inks. That didn't work out! But I do love the results I did get, although I only have a terrible phone picture of them!

The ink dries more rapidly and doesn't spread in the same way as with water, giving some lovely details and texture, and it has a gorgeous soft feel.

My next what if.... is what if I use acetate instead of card? That had to wait until more IPA arrived, I used up the little we had, but that came today so watch this space!

I decided to use one of the purple sheets for a super easy Easter card. These ones had a lovely dappled pattern, like flowers, interspersed with touches of green.

I used a die I got relatively recently in a  sale, I can't remember the make, to cut a floral white border to go over the background. I trimmed the card to give a narrow border all round the die cut, and then mounted on an A6 card base.

All my photos bleach out the background a bit, it was a more detailed with stronger colour than it appears.

Inside the card, I used the same colours to stamp Happy Easter. I applied the distress inks to my blending mat, then picked them up with the Clarity word chain alphabet stamps to give the mottled colour.

I also made a little present to go inside. For Christmas I got my mum a transparent phone cover, and made inserts to fit inside to decorate the phone. (I was a bit gutted that my phone is so old you can't get a cover for it!) I don't think I blogged that, here are the original inserts I made for her.

I decided to give her a new one for Spring. She loves hares (remember the hare canvas for her birthday?) and we got some hare stamps at the last Clarity workshop I went to with Angela in Berkshire.

I started by drawing round the template onto stencil card (I'd remembered to keep it - although took me a while to find where I'd put it "safe"!). I brushed a little green (bundled sage distress ink) over the whole thing as a base, then tore some hills from copier paper and added a series up the card, again with the brush and bundled sage ink.

I stamped the hares in potting soil archival ink (I touched up a couple of paws with a coloured pencil). To complete it, I used some wee foliage stamps around the edge, to add grass at the bottom and trees at the top. Finally, I cut it out, including the apertures for the camera etc.

Again, the photo has bleached it a little, the hills are more defined than this shows. My mum loves it, I got a message earlier to say she now has hares leaping across the back of her phone!

The only issue is that this is going to be a hard one to follow. I may have to use the other hare stamps from the set!