Lilacs

Spring is in the air at Penny Black and is beginning to feel like it here in Ottawa too. The method for this card is exactly the same as shown in my lilac video tutorial This card was stamped with distress stains, one of my favourite mediums for creating a loose watercoloury look. I have used the distress stain daubers for years now to ink my stamps but you may have heard, sadly the daubers are being discontinued. Even though I have a healthy supply of daubers I decided to use the spray stains for this card instead just to see if I could get the same effects with a paint brush. It takes an extra step but it worked and the results made me just as happy. If you have the daubers you apply stain directly to the stamp. (I will just add that the daubers are still available at the Foiled Fox right now; I intend to keep using my daubers and refill them from the spray stain bottles. To do this I just carefully lever off the dauber top and pour in some stain then press the dauber top firmly back on.)

Rather than dob stain on the stamp with the dauber I sprayed some stain into a palette and painted it on to the ‘lilacs’ stamp with a watercolour brush. I used bundled sage and forest moss on the leaves and seedless preserves and dusty concord on the petals. There are some pale lilacs in the background; I stamped them first by painting stain (bundled sage and seedless preserves) onto the stamp and stamping it on a wet piece of hot pressed watercolour paper. I just stamped randomly to spread some colour around then pressed a paper towel over the panel to remove excess water and colour. I dried the panel completely then transferred it to my stamping platform so I could stamp one colour at a time. I painted  seedless preserves stain on the stamp first and stamped onto my panel. Without cleaning the stamp I added some dusty concord to a few areas on the stamp and stamped again. The stain blended both on the stamp and on the paper. I cleaned the stamp and used the same technique for the leaves, bundled sage first then forest moss in a few areas to create shadow and depth to the image.

To add another couple of flowers I repeated the process described above after repositioning the panel. I added a sentiment from the new ‘grateful heart’ set with imperial purple versafine ink.

Thanks for dropping by and thanks for all your encouragement.

Supplies

Stamps: lilacs, grateful heart
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Distress stains: bundled sage, forest moss, seedless preserves, dusty concord
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Ink: versafine imperial purple ink
Paper: hot pressed watercolour

Also: MISTI or stamping platform