Sunday Stampers Week 221 - Stamped flowers

Hello lovely blog friends

Two things before I start - you may need sunglasses for my offering this week! 

Secondly, I want to say a huge thank you to all of you who have taken the time, with each of my posts, to visit and comment.  You have all made me feel like a million dollars with your kind and encouraging comments.  I could not ask for better blog friends and I thank you all for your kindness and generosity.

This week over at Sunday Stampers which is hosted by the wonderful and extremely talented Hels Sheridan who can be found at http://pinkleart.blogspot.co.uk, is stamped flowers.  I have few sets of Wendy Vecchi stamps, all favourites of mine, one set is called 'It's More Flower Art' and has two large flowers in the set. I used the smaller of the two in my card, it has a flower within a flower and is perfect for decoupage.

Recently, through WOYWW I visited a site, which I have since tried to find again, but alas, cannot.  The technique for layering that I have used on my card was showcased by a lady called Dawn but that is all I can remember.  She goes into much detail about sizes etc but as I could not find it again, I have just winged it with my sizes but it still seemed to work.  Anyway, before I explain the how, here is my card:

The flowers are on different layers but they remain perfectly in proportion......

For ease of description, there are six mat and layers to this technique.  To differentiate I will call them white and pink mats.  I used three white mats, the smallest being just over 10 cm (4").  The other two mats increase in size by 2 cm (just under 1").  The pink mats are just under 1/2 cm (1/4") larger than each white mat.   (Edited to say first white mat 10 cm, second white mat 12 cm, third white mat 14 cm, (or roughly 4", 4 3/4", 5 1/2")  - each mat is square).  I hope that make sense now (never was good at figures).  Size is not really all that important, just do not make the coloured mat too big or you will lose some of the stamping. 

I took the three white mats, smallest on top and temporarily stuck them together (with repositionable glue) in a stack, keeping the edges as equally spaced as possible.  I then took the flower stamp and stamped the flowers randomly over all three mats.  Try not to go in the middle for the first one and stamp a couple off the page for a more balanced look.  At this stage the edges do not look too clear, but that's fine, it will not matter later on.  I stamped and cut out four flowers and placed these over the stamped flowers (as masks)and then I overstamped with my Hero Arts Newsprint stamp.  After removing the masks and being careful, I pulled the mats apart, overcoloured the background with Antique Linen distress ink and mounted them onto the pink coloured mats. 

Somehow, I know not how, the flowers remain perfectly sized and formed!  When I saw this on Dawn's demo she layered the mats flat onto each other but I decided to give mine some height with foam tape and surprisingly the flower design did not distort.  It really is amazing and I do hope you will give it a try.

I coloured the flowers with my current favourite Tim Holtz distress ink in Picked Raspberry, with Wild Honey for the centres.  I added black pearls to the centre.  I stamped and coloured one flower and decoupaged this over the bottom left flower, just to show that the flowers stay perfectly in proportion even with all the layering.  The whole thing was then mounted onto cream cardstock which I had edged with Antique Linen distress ink.

The vintage ribbon has been dyed with Picked Raspberry distress ink and scrunched.  I then sprayed the whole thing with Perfect Pearls in an effort to tone down the pinkness! I added an TH Idea-ology button to finish off.

Apologies for my long windedness but if you want to try the technique you need to know how it was done.  I don't know whether it would work with other images but it might be worth an experiment.

If you do visit I hope you will leave me a comment, I truly appreciate them and love to read them all.  I always try to return the compliment, wherever possible.  Crafty hugs, Anne x