Today's Challenge is to decorate the envelope to go with the card.
Now I've got my 'How To' and 'Design' books back, I decided to have an amble through The Rubber Stamper's Bible by Francoise Read in the early morning sunshine yesterday. Once I'd gone a bit lobster-like and retreated for suncream (just in time thankfully!), I got very excited about the section where you stamp an image on dark paper, emboss it, and paint the inside of the image with thick bleach. The resulting faded parts are then handcoloured.
You might be wondering why I'm telling you this, as my card shows few signs of this technique. Ah well, yes, that's because on looking at my collection of stamps, I realised I didn't have many that you can use it for. So instead, I took my new Lizard stamp (from BladeRubber shop near the British Museum, whose blog incidentally introduced me to 365 Cards), used clear Ranger resist pad and clear embossing powder on a black sheet of bargain Hobbycraft sugar paper.
Then I ambled down to the bathroom, found some thin bleach, sloshed it onto the embossed paper, and this was the result. Rather sombre, and I'm wondering if I've been influenced by that new monkey fossil that's been in the papers this week.
Anyway, I'm really pleased with the general idea, and am going to buy some thick bleach (it's easier to control) and I'm going to play with the idea a bit more in future. I'm wondering whether once it's dry I can reprint and re-emboss over the top and re-bleach to add depth, or whether as bleach never stops working and eventually kills the paper, it'll merely kill the reprinting.... Only time will tell, literally!
This would be a great technique with an ammonite stamp, maybe on brown paper. Except I don't have one, and now I'm unemployed (yes!!!), I can't really justify spending cash in case I need it later, so I might make one out of a washing up sponge..... or potato..... or card...... Ok not potato, as they're still sitting on the kitchen table waiting to be planted.
