Hello crafty friends. I’m off to Kent this evening to be ready for the first day of Clarity’s summer retreat tomorrow, so have another of last year’s background creations to share with you today! We made this one with inks on a gelli plate, then laid a couple of pieces of the fab BOW-WOB paper (the ink lifts against the white areas on the paper, and the black parts act as a resist).

I took inspiration for the rest of this design from the layout at Atlantic Hearts and the fab sentiment fits the brief at Word Power – read on for the rest of the details…

So, as I said above, I pulled a print directly from my gelli plate onto a 6×6 card blank. The colours look a little like ‘speckled egg’ and ‘shaded lilac’ Distress Inks (do you think I made a note of them at the time…?!) and I used spotty and striped pieces of the BOW-WOB paper for the pattern. Having that overlap in the centre where I joined the papers at a different point to the change in colour just made it a bit more interesting.

Looking at Atlantic Hearts’ layout, I decided to use trees for the upright portions, picking up the highlands treescape stamp set. I didn’t think a bow would look quite right on this, so reflected that part of the sketch with my little stag for a more masculine look.

I then added the sentiment from the Quotes set 5 stamps, plus a few little leafy additions from the highlands stamps. I still felt it needed something more, so doodled a frame around it with a micron pen.

This may be a one layer card, but it’s a rather different style from my usual cards – and I’m looking forward to seeing how Barbara is going to challenge us with techniques over the next couple of days. I hear there’s going to be paint (and I don’t usually do ‘messy’!!)