Dynamic Duos Challenge 88 - Red and Teal

Good morning all,

I feel I have not posted for ages, but I have been choked full of the cold and also life with two kids is never that quiet!! I have been spending my free time looking at lots of blogs and learning about new techniques to try. The biggest problem I find is that I see a technique that I think would be great to try, but it always means spending more money!! I am a bit of a clothes fanatic (especially shoes) and so now I am having to try and split any money I have between craft items and clothes. I did quite a bit clothes spend in the Christmas holidays (all things I needed of course!!!!!) and so I am having to ensure I pay that off first, before doing any more spending.

Anyway, I do actually have two cards to share today, one for the Dynamic duos challenge (my first every entry) and one for the Less is More challenge (again, first time entry). Lets look at the Dynamoc Duos one first.

The challenge was to use Red and Teal

I was delighted, as I already had both these colours of card stock AND inks!! I pulled out a Chrysanthemum stamp that I purchased from Hobbycraft and decided that I wanted to try the rock and roll technique which I had seen demonstrated by Catherine Pooler. I had already tried this technique with other inks and I came across a big problem. I had seen this done by inking up the stamp in one colour and then rocking it in the second colour…..problem being that the first stamp colour then covered my ink pad….anybody else found this/have a solution??????

I decided that this time, I would ink up in the red and then use a sponge, dipped in the teal to dab around the edges of the stamp. I had also seen a beautiful effect created by spraying the stamp with water before stamping the image in order to have a water-colour type image. I tried this, but the inks just ran and looked awful - perhaps if I stamped on the water-colour paper, this would help???

Anyway, I gave up with that thought and just stamped the un water sprayed image on to my card stock. I was really happy with the result :-) I don't own a flower stock stamp and so I came up with the idea of creating the stock using a repeated sentiment - Thank you. This stamp, by personal impressions was the perfect size for the job. I alternated the image being stamped in red and teal.

I then layered up a red and teal strip of card for my sentiment. It took me a while to decide how to do this. At first, I was going to add a layer of vellum over the top and stamp the sentiment in teal, but that just didn't sit right with me. I had just bought some sea foam white embossing powder and so I decided to try that…..I really like the effect - however, I found it really difficult to dry the powder  - perhaps because I already had the two layers of card stock behind it????

I attached the strip onto the card using foam pads to add a bit of dimension and then I thought I was done. I left it on the coffee table and glanced at it every so often, feeling that something was missing. It just needed that something else. I had my stick on pearls out for the Less is More card and thats when it came to me - It needed some pearls on the embossed Chrysanthemum. I was so happy with how this looked.

This morning, just as I was about to photograph the card, I got that 'something missing' feeling again….I had bought some red crystals for making Christmas cards with my son and I still had some left over. I felt these would just finish the card off nicely, and personally, I feel it does.

Here is the result……

If I had the tools (on my 'to buy list'), I think I would add some cute die cut butterflies with maybe a bit of glitter or such like on to, but for now, it will have to remain as it is :-)

Thank you so much for looking and please let me know if you have any ideas of how to stop the spread of inks for the rock and roll technique, and if you have any suggestions on how to make the watercolour technique work better.

Cardstock: Red from stash, Teal from Papermill Direct

Stamps: Chrysanthemum from Hobbycraft, Thank you x 2 from Personal Impressions

Inks: Red from Hobbycraft, Memento Teal Zeal, Papermania Seafoam White EP

Embellishments: Pearls/Crystals from stash.