A brag post... My work in print.

A couple of months ago  I received an email from a lady asking for my permission to use some  photos from my blog for an article she was writing for a  French crafting magazine.

Initially I thought this was a wind up as three pieces she had chosen were my  first experimental pieces with distress oxide inks and Lavinia stamps.

After some consideration and a discussion with my deputy head who speaks and reads French, I gave her permission to use the photos.
The magazine is not available in the UK
so I never really expected to see a copy.

My deputy head said " my daughter lives in France. I will ask her to track down a copy and I'll bring it back when I visit her at Easter. "

Cutting a slightly  longer story short...
Her Easter  holiday plans changed. So I gave up on ever seeing my work in print.

Then  last week Michelle came over to England, on a surprise visit  bringing  with her this copy of the magazine for me.

I flicked through the mag  quickly and didn't see my images so  I thought the lady had changed her mind.

It wasn't until later that I looked through it properly and found Elise had actually used four of my images.

Regular readers will probably recognize the  photo's as it wasn't very long ago I posted them.

I don't read or speak french so I have no idea what Elise had written.   I ve had a chest infection this past week and haven't had the energy  or concentration to type the text into google translate to find out.


So I am hoping  she hasn't written anything too negative.. lol

I guess this post could be considered a brag post to some.  But this is a first for me so I just had to share. As nothing like this has ever happened before and it probably never will happen again... lol
Thank you Elise  for asking to use my work for your article. I got quite a kick out seeing my work in print and thank you to Jan and Michelle for making it possible for me to see and own a copy of the magazine.

Playing with Distress Oxides again.

 This week I have been experimenting with distress oxide  inks  on various types of card stock.  The  background on these cards were created by squishing the ink pads onto a baking sheet and  spritzing the ink with water and  laying the card onto the wet ink. 

I found technique this can be a bit  hit and miss, too much water on the baking sheet and the inks  seem too mix under the card giving a rather muddy look to the colours rather than the clean bright colours of the pads. 

Too little water and the ink doesn't spread enough to give even coverage so  you're left with lots of dry white patches. Which really isn't a good look.
  

After much experimentation  I found the best way to combat the muddiness  and to avoid  the dry patches is to spritz the ink on the baking sheet and then lightly spritz the card stock before laying it into the ink.
In my opinion this technique works best on glossy card stock.  BUT pigment inks like Versafine are not suitable for glossy card stock.


I love  Versafine ink for stamping  silhouettes as it's a real dense black ink,  but Versafine ink rubs off glossy card even after it has dried.
I had a choice here, .. do I splash out on more black ink pads or try to find a card that will react well with water and Versafine ink.
I decided to find a more suitable card stock.  
 The best results I got were on Multifarious card stock ... sold by Lavinia Stamps. This stuff retails at £5.80  for 10 sheets.  Which is pretty expensive card for practicing on.     
I tried  various  types of card and most didn't react well. 
My second choice of paper for this technique is be  watercolour paper....  Nothing fancy or expensive.  I used a block  of watercolour paper from The Works  which cost £4.00 for 20 sheets. The sheet are not as big as A4 sheet but it does work out a little cheaper.
Most watercolour papers that I have worked with have a course side and a slightly smoother,  flatter side.  It's best to work on the flatter side as it's easier to stamp on. However,  I found I needed  to stamp the larger silhouette images several times  fill in the misses caused by the slight texture on the paper. So it is  really important to have stamp positioning tool to enable over stamping.

Most of  the stamps used in the making of these cards are from Lavinia Stamps.