So Long and Farewell Blackberry Bliss

I, like many of you I suspect, have had a love hate relationship for the last two years. Blackberry Bliss has been a tricky friend! I love its rich colour, and ability to add depth to any colour combination. I have not, however, enjoyed its ability to stain everything in sight! 

When I get creative its not generally a very orderly process, (which some would say shows true creative genes..?!) but as a general rule whatever mess I have made can been easily remedied with a wipe of the craft table, wash of my hands and perhaps of wash of the clothes I've been wearing. 

Blackberry Bliss, however, has not been so willing to part company with me. My hands have regularly looked like I have had a rather unfortunate accident, or someone else just has! A favoured pale blue cardigan now has some custom sleeves with a rather unique ombre effect on the cuffs, and I have smudged more finished cards with just a spot of Blackberry Bliss for 'effect' than I can really get away with.

However this has not stopped me using this fantastic colour one more time to make this gorgeous butterfly card above. Having die cut out the Butterfly in Whisper White Card I then used a sponge dauber to colour the centre of the butterfly in Daffodil Delight. Then from the edges inwards I daubed in Blackberry Bliss, lightening the pressure so that the two colours could blend together. Three Daffodil Delight candy dots were glued down the body of the butterfly to pick up the yellow on the wings.

The Background of the card is simply stamped with the fern from Butterfly Basics in Cucumber Crush on Cucumber Crush Card, stamping and then stamping again before reinking to create depth (know as stamping off). The green card was then glued to the base card made from Blackberry Bliss.

A greeting was stamped in the corner of my green background, before gluing on the butterfly. Here I just glued the body of the butterfly, which then allowed me to shape the wings outwards to give more dimension and also the lovely shadow on the background.

I hope you have enjoyed using this fabulous colour as much as I have, and will now enjoy some of the pretty New InColours available, that will perhaps be a slightly easier friend to have in the craft room!

Un-inking technique with Blender Pens

Colourful Cards with Sheltering Tree

I love the Sheltering Tree stamp set, and had fun creating this card as an example for my Male Card Class. I really enjoyed the bright colours of Cucumber Crush, Watermelon Wonder and Pacific Point, they are lovely and zingy together! 

I was especially pleased when I managed to add some bunting to the scene using the cake toper from the Build a Birthday stamp set. I was keen to remove the poles from the stamp to just leave me with the bunting. So I set about trying various methods. 

 I didn't have my Stampin' Markers with me so was unable to colour in the section I wanted, so instead I 'un-inked' the poles of my stamp with my blender pens by running the tip of the pen over the unwanted inked area. Blender pens are designed to pick up ink and so they are perfect for this technique

I would recommend going over the area on the stamp you want to un-ink several times with the blender pen, and clean off the pen each time on some scrap paper, this allows you to keep picking up the colour off the stamp. 

Also have a practice at stamping your un-inked image before you put it directly on your project, its very annoying to add that finishing touch, only to smudge it slightly. 

I mounted my finished picture on a piece of striped DSP from the Pretty Petals DSP Stack, onto card base of Cucumber Crush. Happy Stamping!

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