Good Evening,
Over the last few days I have been doing a bit of paper cutting but today I felt like having a messy play with paints and inks but was not brave enough so ended up mixing up a bit Groovi and stencil. Claritystamp have really gorgeous stencils and I have 'invested' in quite a few of them but rarely get a chance to play with them. While going through my stencil collection, I remembered I had bought the stencil designed by Jo Rice at the open day in Leyburn last year Which I love and have not played with so here is what I came up with ...
1.) Using the Groovi A5 square nesting and circle nesting plates, emboss the largest 2 squares and largest 2 circles. Place the stencil inside the circle, stick it down with Groovi tabs and gently emboss around the stencil. If you prefer you can use a white pencil instead to go around. Remove the stencil and go over the outlines with a No.2 ball tool.
2.) Emboss the design from the A5 floral design plate around the outlined flower. Between the square double onlines, emboss the design from the cake decorations border plate and in the double outlines of the circles, emboss the design from the large leave netting A5 plate.
3.) Color the design from the back. I used distress markers as they are water based. In the next step I want to use bendable pencils with alcohol blending solution so it is important not to use anything that will smudge when using the blending solution.
4.) Using various colours I coloured around the floral design but not in the stencilled flower. Use the pencil as flat against the paper as possible so you do not get any harsh lines. This will make the blending easier.
5.) To blend the colours I used alcohol blending medium and a make up cotton bud. You need very little medium on the cotton bud to blend. In circular motion blend the lightest colour first and work your way through the darker colours. Instead of alcohol blending medium you can use Zest-it, Pergamano Dorso oil or Lavender oil. Instead of a make up cotton bud you can use a paper blending stump, Cut n Dry nib or even take a little bit of cotton wool and wrap it tightly around a cotton stick to give you a small cotton bud.
6.) I wanted the rest of the empty areas as lace work for which I used the A5 straight perforating basic grid. I perforated the design first as I find it easier to line it up to do the embossing later on the other side. From the front perforate with the one needle tool every other hole vertically and horizontally in the 4 corners and the stencil outlined flower.
7.) To emboss the dots around the perforations, turn the parchment over, line up the holes using pins in the corners. Stick the parchment down and remove the pins if they get in your way while embossing the dots.
This is what it looks like from the front after all the dots are embossed.
Generally though, if it is a more complicated design with more embossing than perforating, I do the embossing first as it is easier to count the dots.
8.) Emboss the first border on the back from the straight border pattern piercing plate 2 around the 4 sides of the outside square. Turn the parchment over to the front and perforate a whole in the middle of the alternate square on the border.
9.) Cut the piece to size. I cut 2 pieces of black card (19x19cm and 15x15cm) and a backing paper from the Northern Lights Designer Paper Pack (18.5x18.5cm). Stick the parchment piece on the smaller black card using strips of the left over (why waste such beautiful paper!) backing paper wrapped around the corners. Stick this whole piece on the backing paper, larger black card and a folded white card. Thread a thin piece of ribbon through the holes of a button and tie a bow. Stick the button on the card for a flower centre.
Jo's beautiful stencil and all Groovi plates are available from www.claritystamp.com.
This coming week, the design team will be inspiring us with their beautiful samples made using the new Groovi plates alongside Maria who will be demonstrating these plates on Hochanda on Wednesday, 18th Jan, between 1-2pm and 5-6pm. Do tune in to watch the live demos or set the box to record the shows. The news Groovi plates are beautiful and so much fun.
Enjoy.
Love and laughter
Tina
