Today is the day.....to try something new!

Hello, its Claire with you today and I am sharing a card that shows off a couple of techniques, both of which are new to me.  I am a bit of a newcomer to 'messy' crafting as I call it, but many of  you I know aren't, and I really enjoyed playing and creating this for you. I pulled out my spray mists, stencils , and some textured paint/paste.

I don't know about you, but with the various deliveries we have to home we have a fair few boxes coming into the house, all of which are scrutinized (by me) as to whether they are good enough to be re-used before they head to the recycling bin. One particular box (in the photo below) caught my eye, and was stored away for another use in my craft room, and here I have found its new purpose - it is my new 'spray mist studio'

I sprayed in a lovely yellow a small mdf tag with a couple of layers for a good coverage.

I then took Sarah's chevron stencil, a palette knife and covered the tag with the textured paste. You may have seen Sarah demonstrate this on one of her Create & Craft shows. I was chatting with her about it after the show and she described it as the texture of peanut butter (yum....my all time favourite snack), so hopefully that will give you some idea as to how it handles.

I removed the stencil (possibly a little early as a section of the paste pulled away), and allowed it to dry while carried on with the ext element of the card. As the paste dried the richness of the green/gold colour and the dense sparkle within it intensified.

PROMARKERS: Clothes: apple cider/moss/twilight sky/mustard/ warm grey
Hair: cocoa/burnt sienna/walnut
Skin: putty/tan/coral

While the tag was drying I stamped and coloured one of Sarah's doodle dolls (from the Authentic Boy stamp set found HERE) onto some kraft craft. Now this was also a new technique to me also, and I was so impressed at how easy the colours blended onto this new card (designed specially for promarker work), I will definatly be using this much more and experimenting with other colours. To add a little texture to the boys jeans I found some textured material, covered a small section with the promarker blender ink, and pressed into the blue ink of the image, this has the effect of bleaching some colour, perfect for a denim look. It is a technique I remember Sarah demonstrating (link HERE to remind yourself of Sarahs card )

To make the starry background I went back to my sprays, and this time used Sarah's starry stencil, before stamping and adding the dried tag and image of the boy. To finish I embellished with some documented 365 stamps from various monthly kits Sarah sends out.

I thought that by leaving the date blank, it would be fun to use it's as a birthday card, and fill in when you know who you will be sending it to, it lovely to be able to send a personalised card.

I hope you have enjoyed what I have created, thanks for stopping by and see you again soon.