One Layer Card - Flower - Less is More Challenge Week 293

My challenge entry

Eek! This one was tricky! The idea of a One Layer Card is that you actually do your thing on the actual cardstock. So, if you mess up, you have to start again, (0r keep going to see if you can redeem it or it is binned). Also no sticking up bits, or embellishments and no sticking a piece of other card or paper onto the cardstock after you've worked on it. The Challenge is HERE

So I did other things instead whilst I had a think about whether I felt like doing the challenge and did bits in between doing other things. What Other Things? Well, exciting things!

On Sunday I lured the parentals to dragging my rollator over the soft sand at the beach so I could go and paddle. First time in 3.5 years hurrah!!!! I staggered using my Flipstick and had a rest on the Rollator every couple of metres. Then once we were on the hard sand, I rollated myself all the way to the water and had an actual paddle. It was brilliant! And we visited the icecream van afterwards. Perfect! Even the strong breeze was warm!



And on Thursday my carer dyed my hair dark blue for me. I've been bright white grey for nearly a decade so it looks a bit odd to me, but I love it! Also my sister was staying with me on crucial personal affairs. So. A busy week! 

Mum thinks I should have a proper cut, but I think she did well (it's growing out now)

Anyway, less of my hectic life (yeah I know it's not hectic to everyone else, but given I've spent over 3 years housebound, it felt like running several marathons in the same week!) I'd have been more sensible spreading it out over several weeks, cos the Post Exertional Malaise is, well, painful, but sometimes it's fun to be a little bit feckless! I'm on top dosage of my painkillers now though and they're working, so as long as I'm sensible for the next few weeks, I shouldn't have a relapse.

Anyway, back to the cards, I used VersaColor little inch sized ink pads (less to store and more colours for your pennies overall) in 14 Scarlet, 15 Magenta, 16 Peony and 34 Orchid. I don't have any watersoluble type markers, but wanted to use different ink colours on the same stamp, at the same time so I tied with the ink pads. I also tried using a spritzer to blend it, but I think I need a smaller, finer one for that to work on such small stamps. 

I used Inkadinkado's 98852 Spring is Here - a lovely set of 23 'inchies' stamps (all a square inch max in size) which I bought years ago and are probably retired. In fact, the whole concept of Inchies has probably come and gone, but me, I still use stuff even if it's retired!

I have to admit I have a lot of trouble getting a decent imprint from stamps and my increased hypermobility, lack of strength and dodgy motor skills didn't help, instead of my fingers pressing down, they just overextended and hurt - the perils of cripple crafting LOL. I am determined to find ways to do this stuff though, I may invest in a Precision Stamping Tool or alternatively persuade mum to come round and do the pressing down for me (giggle). I put all 3 stamps onto a single acrylic block  by putting them where I wanted them on the card, then putting the block down on them so they are in the right place on the block.  And I used my right angle positioning tool to sort of get them in the same place each card.

Anyway 8 cards later I had 4 decent impressions and 4 slightly rubbishy ones where part of the motif was missing. Some are slightly 'abrupt' with the colour changes, others are done with a mucky stamp and a single colour over them (like the one above). These are the other 3 that were fairly decent impressions.

The other 4, they had bits missing from the stamping. The VersaColor inks are water based, so I hoicked out my Letraset ProMarkers (now called Winsor & Newton) which are alcohol based, and had a fiddle around with those. The idea was to use alcohol based pens to not disturb the waterbased stamping.

A bit of time later, I decided that I wasn't very good at using them to fill in the missing bits, and instead used them as a solid background. My fine motor skills are returning slowly, but are still a bit pants, so I had to use the blender pen quite a lot to 'shove back' colour that went outside the lines.

One of them was a disaster with the Promarkers, so I cut out the two inchies I'd not messed up, and will put them in my 'embellishment' stash. Better than throwing the whole thing in the bin!

I used Blossom, Rose Pink and Pastel Pink (3 layers without waiting long enough for them to dry properly between layers) of the ProMarkers for the backgrounds (one colour per card not over each other, the whole blending thing turned out to be beyond me, probably the card stock wasn't up to it. It has bled through to the back of the card, and even onto the other side where I fiddled on with the blender pen to remove mistakes. One lives and learns!).

As I mentioned in the week 291 Less is More Challenge post with the Peel Offs, I send cards to fellow sufferers of severe me/cfs who are fellow members of the 25% Group charity. Because the ProMarkers are Alcohol markers, those cards cannot be used for that purpose. Many severe me/cfs sufferers have Multiple Chemical Sensitivies, and even if they don't MCS, one of the symptoms of severe me/cfs is smell sensitivity.

To use the promarkers I used a 3M valve mask cos I'm a bit smell sensitive myself, and even with that I developed a mild headache. Before, when I was more unwell with me/cfs, my nose was so sensitive I couldn't stand to be in even the next room to someone eating a banana cos the smell was overwhelming and so it's something I'm very aware of when I send anything to fellow severely affected people. This smell sensitivity means that you can smell things that others can't, for a lot longer.

With Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and less so with the  more common smell sensitivity, all smells are super intense, make you feel sick, may even cause you to vomit, and give you a stonking headache. So not something I want to impose on someone who is probably bed bound with curtains permanently shut (due to light sensitivity) when I'm trying to cheer them up with one of my cards!!!

So. I will not be inflicting even well aired and well dried off ProMarker cards on them! I'm hoping the VersaColor inks being water based won't cause them any trouble.