So today I thought I would show you one of my creations and give some insight into what inspired me to make it and how I made it.
It all started when I stumbled across a stash of envelopes under my desk. I have no idea where they came from originally but I felt I needed to use them before they were lost once more in the blackhole that is under my desk.
The envelopes are small, about 12cm x 8cm, are off-white and made from a good thick paper almost like childrens craft paper, I know it as sugar paper. Anyway, there are some tiny inclusions in the paper making it look a little rustic. I also had a large amount of watercolour card off-cuts from a previous commission which I couldn't bear to throw away that happened to be big enough to make cards to fit in these little envelopes. I love it when things come together like this.
I have a HUGE collection of rubber stamps and set about looking for a single image that would fit well on the size of card. I quickly came across this one of a hare in full flight. The hare is a creature mentioned in a song by my favourite musician, which is why I bought it in the first place. The image of the hare was not going to do enough on its own so I needed something to fill out the space. I love the natural look of seed heads and have a lot of this type of stamp too and again I found a lovely image just right for the job.
So, onto the method.
I used a black archival ink to stamp the hare onto a piece of white card which has tiny flakes of mica in it. (White? Yes it was originally.) I then added some grass using some tiny stamps to give the hare some 'ground' to be running across. With a Pro-marker pen I coloured all around the hare so as to leave the hare white amongst the background. The image was trimmed and then mounted onto a black piece of card giving the image deffinition.
I then stamped the seed head image over the main body of the card making sure that the image on the far left, at the spine of the card, showed the stalk and the seed head going off the page. This makes such a difference to the overall look of any card stamping off the page. With the other images I made sure NOT to show the stalks so that the space under the image of the hare remained clear. Again this makes all the difference to the final look.
After positioning the image of the hare towards the bottom right of the card I felt it needed a little something else. I once made a board-book which I dotted with torn phrases from a poetry book. Obviously it would take me a long time to find the right phrase from a book and I really wanted to make these little cards quickly so I used a tried and trusted method of printing phrases onto vellum.
Using a great font that looks like and old typewriter I printed 'the wonderful things seen' out and tore the strip to give it a rustic edge. When printing phrases out like this I centre the phrase on the page of vellum so that I have plenty of paper either side. This means you have a ribbon of vellum which can be cut to the right length. I attached this to the card using mini brads in silver.
Overall the finished card is quite simple in colour and style but I think you will agree it is a great use of some very small envelopes.
Till the next time
Kim x
No comments:
Post a Comment