Hello crafty friends – time to meet the last of my elegant ladies from last Friday’s Clarity Social TV show! This beauty uses the Elegant Ladies 2 and Floral Flourish stencils, along with the Paris Skyline mask. I love her attitude – she looks ready to take the catwalk by storm!

The starting point for this was to attach the aperture lady to a 6×6 piece of premium card with low tack tape. I then slid the floral stencil behind the figure and covered her head, arms and legs with small pieces of low tack tape.

I then set about sponging Distress Oxides through the stencils, putting ‘dried marigold’ onto her bodice and ‘stormy sky’ onto her skirt – the best way to do this is to pounce the inky sponge, rather than smear, so that the fine floral stencil doesn’t move. I removed the Floral Flourish stencil, keeping the aperture figure in place, so that I could add shading to her dress using ‘watering can’ Archival ink and a torn piece of copy paper. I next moved each of the small pieces of low tack tape in turn, first uncovering her head and putting the tape across her dress so I could sponge the grey ink into the aperture, then did the same with her arms and legs.

Once that was done, I put the positive piece of the stencil over my elegant lady to act as a mask, again holding it in place with low tack tape. I placed the top section of the Paris skyline mask across the whole piece (including the small bits that fill in on the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe), then dragged ‘black soot’ Distress Oxide down through it with another sponge – working downwards in one direction gave me a soft bottom edge across the skyline.

After removing the skyline mask, I kept the stencil lady in place and brushed the ‘stormy sky’ across the clouds mask, adding a little of the ‘dried marigold’ over the clouds once done to try and get that golden glow you can sometimes see in an evening sky. I used a torn piece of copy paper and sponged more of the ‘block soot’ over her feet, so she has ground to stand on. I could then lift the stencil mask off.

Having done all that work on creating this scene, I simply finished the card with a mount of blue Toscana companion paper and attached the topper to a 7×7 card blank.

I do think these city skyline masks (there are ones of London & New York too) make great backgrounds for all sorts of figures. I may not be able to replicate this exact pose, but I’m looking forward to getting some good pictures of the Paris skyline when I’m there next month!

Before then, I’m going share this elegant lady with a couple of current challenges. I took the colours from AAA Colourful and my various stencils pick up the theme at Just Us Girls.