Spring is in the Air at Stamps and Stencils

Yes, really!...I know with the recent cold weather we've been having in England you may not think so but if you hop across to Stamps and Stencils to see the wonderful inspiration from the design team you might just start to believe it. The lovely Rachel is our host for this months challenge and she's chosen Spring as her theme, here's what she has to say about it.

 This has to be my favourite time of year - hopefully we wave goodbye to winter weather and start to see a burst of colour all around us - flowers start to bloom and birds and bees get busy doing their thing! For me it is a time of hope and new life. But what about you? What does spring mean to you? 

Well Spring to me always conjours up vibrant coloured flowers. After the early purity of white snowdrops nature says 'Here I am' and wakes us all up with acid yellow daffodils, purple iris and bright pink primulas....oh and spring rain!

I knew I wanted to make brightly coloured flowers and chose to alter a small recessed frame I had. I painted the base in a mixture of fresco paints - Granny Smith, Teresa Green, Snowflake and Carribean Sea and Caramel dry brushed around the edges.

Whilst the paint was still wet I spinkled a tiny amount of Sea Green Brusho and Woodstain Bistre and painted it in. I was inspired by seeing Lin Brown demo the new infusions (on my wish list) for PaperArtsy see link here for info. I only used a little and thought it wasn't very obvious but once I applied Wendy Vechi clear embossing paste through the stencil I could see the paste absorbing some of the colour, I haven't applied anymore paint or colour to the frame.

I then stamped the quote 4 times in archival.

I used further fresco paints in banana, bubblegum pink, bougainvillea and eggplant, stamped the Eclectica Lin Brown daisies in plum and cobalt archival before cutting out. I then used  a versamark pad on the flower and clear embossed them before spraying with mica sprays, a combination of Lindy's stamp gang sprays and Luminarte primary elements in reds, pinks, gold and purple.

 I left them to dry for a while and then used a heat gun to speed up the process and also in warming the embossing powder thought it would 'set' the mica.

I got the idea from experimenting the other day with pigment ink pads that I have had for years but don't want to throw away. It started out as revisiting an old technique of 'direct to paper' and evolved from there. Here are the results of the first experiments.

Back to the frame, I made stalks in the same way and then arranged the 'spring rain' splattered flowers in the frame.

Hope you feel inspired to join in the challenge and as always thanks for stopping by.