Penny Black meets Infusions

Hi Everyone,

I'm a bit late posting tonight but I forgot to do this earlier as I had a house full of men today 😉!  We changed our media supplier back to Sky and although it's changed in the fifteen months since we left so far we are glad to be back.  It was quite funny having our fairly small lounge overrun with two Sky engineers, one Openreach engineer and one OpenReach guy to test the fibre optic connection but they did a grand job.  I can't believe how slow our VM internet was compared to this.

Anyway, onto the crafting.... Monday was my friend Helen's birthday and I'm sharing the card I made for her.

Last month I was really chuffed to be chosen the winner of the Stamping Sensations Challenge and my prize was a set of Couture Creations Mariposa Dies, well, three sets really and this is my first make with one of the sets.  It's a bit of a puzzle placing the dies (it take 8 to cut this design) inside each other but I think it's worth it once I got the hang of it.

I have never used this type of design where the diecut is the principal part of the card,  I'm more into my inks and painty backgrounds so true to form I stuck the pretty diecut ontop of a layer of lovely PaperArtsy Infusion background card I  had made previously.  The diecut is from pearlescent card and I stuck a few sparkly embellishments on, layered onto a co-ordinating matt and finally onto the card blank.

I couldn't have a card without stamping somewhere though so I stamped the sentiment on the inside front and on the inside back I used my gorgeous new Penny Black stamp again (see my previous post for simple stamping of it).  I used a technique with Infusions that Courtney (Leandra and Mark's daughter from PaperArtsy) taught at a Make n Take at Ally Pally in April.  You use your finger dipped into Infusions to apply them direct to your stamp which means you can select specific colours for specific areas, then spritz the stamp with water until it beads and stamp onto your surface.  It gives a lovely watercolour effect  and you can stamp several times with the same application.  The stamping in top right and bottom left corners was after I respritzed the stamp so the definition was going but still a nice effect.

To finish I overstamped with Black Archival Ink at which point I thought I'd made a mess and ruined the whole card but I left it till the next day and it started to grow on me.  In the end I was quite pleased with the effect.  (Don't forget you can click the pics to enlarge)

That all tonight folks.  See you again soon.....

Hugs

Lesley  Xx