A Frugal Journey Through January Day 21

 

Welcome to Day 21, yes 21, of my frugal journey, thank you so much to so many of you for sticking with me.

Today I have some one layer magic for which you can create with some torn scrap paper, Distress Inkpads in one or more colours, a co-ordinating Versafine or Archival ink pad and some favourite stamps. Best of all you end up with a postcard sized piece which you can simply use as well... a postcard (if you are doing this I would add a layer of Glue & Seal before entrusting it to Royal Mail!), work directly on a card blank and it will be ready to pop in an envelope to go, mat and layer the finished piece onto a card blank for some real dimension, or use as I did above, the front cover to a mini book.

My promised video camera/light has yet to arrive so lots of photos today.

Start with half an A4 sheet of copy paper, folded into quarters, either the front of your card blank or a postcard sized piece of card. Place what is the centre of your folded copy paper to the centre of your card and either mark or just eyeball the size of piece you need to tear out of the centre of it to create a frame that fits the size of your finished card.

Don't discard the piece you tore out, you need that too!

Centre the frame over the card and tape it securely to your mat/desk. I am going to just use black ink for all of this as I think that best illustrates the depth you can create - and I happen to be a big fan of black and white!

I applied a fine layer of Black Soot Distress Ink to the inside of the frame and then used the inside piece to apply a little more ink to give a fake quartered effect. When you find yourself looking at this and thinking how uneven it looks remind yourself it's just a background!

 

Still using Black Soot I stamped the second I impression of two different Kaisercraft texture stamps onto my background, keeping to the quartered look. Still looking scrappy but just hang on in there!

 

Using one of the leafy stamps from this retired Hero Arts set, again with one impression stamped off on my scrap piece, I randomly stamped it over my card. Not impressed, bear with me!

I always add my sentiment at this stage, otherwise I tend to get carried away and not leave enough space for it. Versafine is always my first choice for this as the pigments are so strong so gives great definition to this final layer, but sometimes I use Archival as it offers a far more extensive pallette of colours.

 

I picked some bold rose leaves from the same set and again using Versafine Onyx Black stamped them to frame the greeting, repeat stamping each time until I had used all the ink on the stamp to add to the illusion of depth. Now I know this is still looking a bit, or a lot, scrappy but bear with me and remove the frame, carefully, because you will want to use it again!

 

Distress Ink but clean and crisp, and a normal stamp to post it too! Great as a postcard but you can layer it up as well, and use different colours, or multiple colours, different stamps, different greetings.... go on, give it a go.

 

 

 

That's it for today but I will be back tomorrow, same time, same place with another one layer idea, but this time for collage stamps. I hope you will join me then xx

 

 

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