Sunday 21 March 2010

A Card Made With Cosmic Shimmer Misters


It has been a busy weekend here. As well as sorting out the retreat class lists (nealry finished now) we have been to visit our new niece today which was lovely. She was born nearly four weeks ago but as we have been struggling to shake off a virus we have waited to go and see them until we were less germy!

So tonight i wanted to show you a card i made a couple of days ago. I love the Cosmic Shimmer mists we recently got into stock so I needed little persuasion to have a play. The other item I was making can't be shown here yet as i was doing a dry run for a class but here is my card.

To begin I chose three co-ordinating shades of cosmic shimmer mists. I used Golden Sunlight, Mango Blaze and Lava Red. I spritzed the front of a card blank and an off cut of white cardstock and then left them to dry.

In the meantime I stamped my image onto another scrap of white cardstock. Then I coloured it in using normal good quality colouring pencils. They are not watercolour pencils, just normal colouring pencils. I used a blue and green combination to get a good contrast with the copper tones I got when combining my shimmers.
I then used a stump (it is made of paper and can be bought relatively inexpensively in art supply stores) dipped in Sansodor to blend the colours together. I saw a tutorial ages ago on an American stamping site talking about using Odorless Mineral Spirits to blend colouring using normal pencils. Here in the UK it is sold under the name Sansodor. This has the effect of intensifying the colours. The science bit is that the spirits break down the substance that holds the pigment together in the pencils (they are not pure pigment but pigment bulked out with binding agents) this allows the colours to blend and take on a paint like quality.
Once the scrap cardstock which I had shimmered was dry I also stamped the image again to get the two flowers on the coppery shimmered background.
I cut these out, inked the edges with brown ink and using foam pads adhered them over my stamped and coloured images adding a tiny gem to each as a flower centre. I then too the stamped and layered image and stuck that to the front of my shimmered card blank. I then trimmed the edges to make a smaller card just a little larger than my stamped image.
I would love to see any projects any of you have completed using the lovely cosmic shimmers - why not email them over to me at Mel@atripdownmemorylane.co.uk and we may do a reader showcase of shimmered items.