How Does Your Garden Grow?

It gives me great pleasure to share this little project with you today as I was honoured to be invited by the lovely people over at Country View Crafts to be their Guest Designer this month on their challenge blog. I put it together a little project using all things PaperArtsy including my own stamp designs (ELB01), one of my dies, Grunge Paste and my all time favourite paints, Fresco Finish.

Start with one of PaperArtsy's 6x4 box canvas frames and using a palette knife or old credit card, scrape a layer of Grunge Paste through your chosen stencil. When dry, I painted the canvas with Mermaid Fresco Finish, blending in a little bit of Bora Bora, Sage and Guacamole.

 

Grab a small piece of sequin waste and use this as a stencil and sponge a small amount of Inky Pool through the sequin waste using a piece of Cut'n'Dry foam. I also used this colour to highlight the Grunge Paste which I did with a dry brushing technique.

 

 

I like to blend the paints on the rubber of the stamps so that I can print a variegated look to the image so starting with Sage, sponge a layer over the the trio of leaves stamp, followed by a small amount of Tinned Peas then a little bit of Green Olives around the edges of the leaves. If you feel that the paint doesn't look blended, go back to the first colour and gently soften and merge the colours with a tapping motion.When you print this, you will be amazed at the effect.

 

Printing these on the canvas can be a little tricky as the middle of the canvas is not supported but as long as you are prepared for this and have one of your hands inside the back of the canvas, it is not a problem.

 

Use a small script stamp and black Archival ink to print little sections of text randomly over the canvas. Use the stamp without an acrylic block, this way, you can bend the stamp and print tiny little bits. At this point I decided that the brickwork needed to be brown instead of blue so I brushed on a bit of Mud Splat to tone it down.......much better!

 

 

Now for the leaves and flowers which are the focal point of this project. I used the same layering technique on my stamps to print the leaves and stem of the flower. I have found that printing on black cardstock gives an amazing effect. Trim them out leaving a narrow border of black card and they will pop out from the background really well.

 

Instructions for die cutting and stamping the bloom. You will notice that there is a tiny notch in the die. Once you have die cut the shape, use a pencil to mark the back of the die with an arrow before removing the card from the die. This shape is not symmetrical so it is important to know how to line up the image with the die.

 

 

The petal that I am pointing to is the petal that lines up with the notch.

 

 

I have marked the back of my stamp with an arrow which indicated the direction that the stamp appears on the index sheet and an "X" indicates the petal that lines up with the notch.

 

 

Die cut three blooms and then print using the layering of paint technique, stamp the blossom image on all three die cut shapes. The colours I used were Haystack, Pumpkin Soup, Smoked Paprika and Blood Orange. Two of these will be used for the main flower and one for a smaller, cropped flower as shown in the photograph below. I simply cut the middle out of the bloom with scissors to create a smaller flower or you could use a circle die or punch if you don't trust your scissor skills!!!!

 

 

The spiky flower has been cut from the round flower located at the bottom of the plate of stamps.

 

 

Now to get everything ready to assemble. I like to stamp a little bit of script on some of the leaves and flowers for a bit of added interest. I also like to snip between the petals of the bloom so that they can be curled which will give the flower more movement. A few stick on pearls in the centre of some of the flowers is also a nice touch. Then it is a case if sticking it all together. My advice would be to use foam 3D pads wherever possible, this adds more dimension to the project.

 

 

I hope you have all enjoyed this little tutorial and that it has inspired you to have a go yourself. All products can be found here on the Country View Crafts website.