Handmade by Natty

This week over on the Daring Cardmakers blog Joanne has challenged us to go wild with watercolours, inks or paints.

I had a technique already in mind, but had little success with it initially – ink smooshing using a cut up piece of plastic office filing wallet or acetate is such a great and easy way to make “watercolour” backgrounds, but man, the right cardstock makes all the difference.

I initially tried it on two pre-cut pieces of Neenah and wow, what a mistake. The colour just bled into one big mess, but with Bazzill Marshmallow card shoppe it was a whole other look:

Stamps: Altenew – Vintage Flowers, Memory Box – Big and Little Words
Dies: Altenew – Vintage Flowers, Hero Arts – Infinity Nesting Rectangles

So I started out smooshing Adirondack Salmon ink (discontinue but still one of my favourite peachy pinks) on a piece of plastic wallet from my old office supplies. I spritzed it with water then brought the plastic to the surface of my card and proceeded to smoosh it about on the surface and repeated.

I then blitzed with my heat gun to help it dry and repeated the same technique with a little MFT Grout Gray ink smooshed here and there.

Again, once blitzed with the heat gun I used a water brush and stamp block to splatter the two colours of ink over the background.

I left everything to dry and then cut the background panel to size using an Infinity rectangle die.

I decided the card needed a floral focal point, so out came an old favourite: Altenew Vintage Flowers.

I stamped the pink tones from darkest to lightest: LF Peachy Keen, Adirondack Salmon, Altenew Blush, MFT Insulation Pink.

For the grey leaves I realised (almost too late) due to the staining on my stamps it would be easier to go from darkest to lightest again: LF Narwhal, MFT Cement Gray, MFT Grout Gray. Cement Gray was also used for the branch.

Finally I found the perfect understated sentiment in my now very much used Memory Box Big and Little Words stamp set – I just love the size and font used for these sentiments. 🙂

This one was stamped with HA Charcoal ink.

I mounted the background panel on Bazzill Taffy cardstock and the left over flower and leaves are used inside the card rather than being put in the stamp pocket or bin.

Make sure you check out the blog for more ideas and play along if you can. 🙂

Happy crafting!

Altenew – Vintage Flowers stamps Shop at: EH | SBC | SHC	Memory Box – Big and Little Words stamps Shop at: SSS	Altenew – Vintage Flowers dies Shop at: EH | SBC | SHC	Hero Arts – Infinity Nesting Rectangles dies Shop at: EH | SBC | SHC
Adirondack dye ink – Salmon (r) Shop at: SBC	Altenew – Blush dye ink Shop at: EH | MISC	Hero Arts – Charcoal ink pad Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC | SHC	Lawn Fawn – Narwhal ink pad Shop at: EH | SBC | SHC
Lawn Fawn – Peachy Keen ink pad Shop at: EH | SBC | SHC	MFT – Cement Gray ink pad Shop at: SHC	MFT – Grout Gray ink pad Shop at: SHC	MFT – Insulation Pink ink pad Shop at: SHC
Altenew – Red Sunset ink cube set Shop at: EH | MISC | SHC	Bazzill Cardshoppe – Marshmallow Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC	Bazzill Cardshoppe – Taffy Shop at: AZ | EH | SSS	Tonic Studios Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC
3M Scotch double-sided foam tape Shop at: AZ | EH	Lawn Fawn – Stamp shammy cleaner Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC | SHC	MISTI precision stamping tool Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC	Tim Holtz – Distress Sprayer Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC
Tim Holtz – Stampers Anonymous Splat Box Shop at: AZ | SBC | SHC	Sizzix – Big Shot machine Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC	Sizzix – Sidekick machine Shop at: AZ | SBC	Thermoweb iCraft – Purple tape for die-cutting – 1 1/2″ Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC
Tim Holtz – Tonic guillotine trimmer (small) Shop at: AZ | EH | SBC