It's no Monet, but...

I think I like it! I needed a technique card for club tonight and came across the technique called impressionistic stamping on Julie Davison's blog. The basic idea is you stamp on wet paper, let it dry, then stamp again over the first image. It took me some practice to get a look I was happy with, but it's a cool technique.

I already had the stamp set Watercolor Trio (from the summer mini) out, and since Julie had used it on her cards and I liked how it turned out, I decided to follow suit. Otherwise this is my own creation - I had been trying to use a sketch I'd seen posted but it just didn't work out so I went off on my own. I actually do that sometimes, LOL!

For the flower panel I experimented with a few different things. This is what I felt worked best: First I inked up the stamp with melon mambo and old olive markers. Then I spritzed watercolor paper with water just a couple of times and spread the water around with a dry brush. (You could also use an Aqua Painter.) I stamped immediately on the wet paper and let it dry, then stamped the image over top. Despite this being a clear-mount stamp, I still used the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig because to me it looked best when the image was placed exactly where I wanted it. How much water you spray on the paper is a personal choice - I tried between one and four squirts. The more water you use, the more your image will spread. I liked this version because you could still see some of the detail of the image from the first impression - with more water the image was really blurred and I preferred it this way.

For the rest of the card, I used a couple different products: the Very Vintage wheel (soft suede ink on an old olive card base) and the vanilla Smooch Spritz. I stamped a panel of soft suede cardstock with the En Francais background (stamped off once first) then sprayed the Smooch on until it was covered. I finished the layout with a panel of melon mambo designer paper, a strip of 5/8" old olive grosgrain ribbon covered with soft suede, and a sentiment from the same stamp set, using the Matchbox and Lots of Tags dies.

I'm off to keep working on projects for my busy stamping weekend. I will be back tomorrow with my OCC card and I also hope to show you some other stuff I've been working on, if I have time to post - stay tuned!