Valentines Cards (a little bit late!)

I had a session making Valentines cards. Now I know it's a bit late for Valentines, but bear with me because the technique would work with other motifs (in fact, as well as using a heart motif, I also used a leaf motif - so point proven!)

It's a simple technique - borrowed in part from Julie Fei Fan Balzer.  Now, I am sure I have mentioned Julie before. In fact she does not need me to sing her praises. She is a one woman artistic power house! 

But she posted a lovely little blog here. Go and have a look. 

And I borrowed the idea of masking and printing, but I started with pages I had already inked up. (I always have a stash of papers to pull out when needed).  In this case, dictionary pages coloured with a combination of Infusion Inks and Fresco chalk paints. 

I cut a couple of stencils from paper. One was a heart, and one was a stylised leaf  - you see, I told you it wasn't just about valentines. 

I selected a range of papers and trimmed them to fit the card blanks I was using. 

For this to work, you do need a fairly simple shape and one that is "connected".  Remember, you want to use the shape you have cut our as a mask later in the process. 

Despite having a tin full of home made 'stamps' and print blocks, I still felt I needed another one for this project - hence this mess. 

In this case I used self adhesive foam sheets from Hobby Craft.  In the photograph below the bottom block is the new one I made specifically for this project. The top one is a block made ages ago. I am sure I must have shared it before. I stick the foam onto stiff card - packaging from dog food is ideal I find. Cereal packets etc. are too flimsy while Boneo biscuit packets have enough oomph to take the paint and the cleaning afterwards!

I sometimes work with a craft knife when I use sheet foam to make blocks like this. Alternatively I snip the foam sheet with scissors.  

Now, at this point my photography went awol. (I really do need to learn how to set up a little video camera for this sort of thing!)

There were two stages. 

First - using the whole sheet of paper as a stencil, I added markel paint stick with a stiff stencil brush. 

Second - using the shape cut from the same paper as a mask, I printed over using Fresco Paints and the block I had made. 

(Pop over to Julie's blog to see how she does it.) 

These were the colours I used (most of the papers were fairly dark and I wanted the pattern to be lighter than the background.) 

This gave me a range of papers looking something like this (you can see the shimmer from the paint sticks).

Now, because this was, for the most part, dictionary pages I needed to add a bit of substance if I was to add stitch. So I mounted these papers onto a backing of stiffer paper (an assortment of khardi and other craft papers, also from my supply.  I used Hi Tack glue - I find this doesn't make the paper wrinkle.)

And then I got the trusty sewing machine out - newly serviced and cleaned - and stitched the leaf and heart shapes. 

Finally, I mounted the little stitched papers onto the card blanks - again using the Hi Tack glue.

And - voila!