SDC131: Stars Take Two

Over at Stampotique Designers Blog they are having another week of Stars. Some of the entries are stunning i hope you pop over and take a look.

Over at Paper Artsy this week they have a new Guest Designer, Ellen Vargo. I am new to Ellen’s work but she has an amazing eye for colour and abstract design. Over the last three evenings she has shown us how to create tags, cards and then a framed piece of Art.

I don’t understand abstract but i do understand layering and the concept of using lighter colours first and adding darker colours on top. What Ellen has helped me to learn is how to use these techniques with stamps and stencils.

I decided to have a play but instead of using very bright colours and using paint i chose to use Pan Pastels.

Chose colours, Yellow Ochre Shade, Yellow Ochre, Burnt sienna, Ultramarine Blue, Pthalo Blue, Turquoise Shade and Purple, same as i used on my SDC131 Challenge piece over on my Wordpress Blog. This picture was taken early morning and the colours are not as they appear above, they can be seen in their correct colours here.

I used half an A4 sheet of card stock from stash and coloured it using the lighter shades first, then added the blues and purple over the top, decided to use a larger piece of foam to get long lines of colour and didn’t blend them.

Decided to remove some of the top colour by using a mechanical eraser through a stencil (Andy Skinner Hippy Chick). Then used the tip of the eraser to remove more colour by making small circles. Kay from Indigo Blue uses one called a Whizzy Eraser but i managed to purchase one from my local Stationers which also sells the refills called a Jokar.

Went around both the stars and circles with a black pen and then added an inner circle with a white pen, repeated this with the stars but added a stitch border to them. Not too sure if i should have done this as the main image is supposed to be stamped in black so it becomes the main focal point.

Added the book page pieces and adhered them using clear Gesso, then following Ellen’s instructions i blended these into the background by adding some of the colours i had already used.

Stamped images onto the card using Paper Artsy HP1004 and HP1006 plates, the script and the bullseye. Used my new Inkadinkado Gear Bar to stamp the border and the flowers in Misty Blue and White Versacolour Ink for the bullseye, used Jo Firth Young stamps for the main focal image from plate JOFY12. The sentiments are from Get Stamping Magazine Free plate from Issue 6.

Made a mistake when cutting up the background and cut the half A4 into 4 instead of two so have got myself smaller cards which are 4.5 x 3.2 inches.

I like these more muted cards and will use this technique again and again. As it turns out i actually like this abstract idea so thanks To Ellen and Paper Artsy for my newly learned technique.

All four of the cards together. Hope you like them too. Looking forward to your comments. xxx