Pressed Grunge!

"Pressed Flowers" gets a little "grungy" treatment today: what starts out as a fresh and clean card goes "Goth-fairy tale" with some stencils and sponging, look! First I inked up my bold "Pressed" sunflower in dark pink and stamped stamping off to get the light shade then reinking and repeating to make the 4 flowers on this one layer Pure luxury White card.

Next I took my line art sunflower from "A Year of Flowers" and inked up just the flower center and inner part of the petals with black, stamping over the dark pink blooms, then cleaning off the stamp and inking the same areas of the image in dark pink and stamping onto the lighter pink blooms.

See how they pop? I added some black stamped sunflower leaves which is such a great contrast to the white and pink. Then I used this new little Tim Holz mask (stencil) pack I got for only $2.50 at Michaels. That little flourish was exactly what I've been wanting to go with both these flower sets, I am always drawn to big flowers with curling, swirling tendrils on cards, clothing, fabrics, you name it! This one is a great shape and scale for both my images and A2 cards. Unfortunately , my sponging pic did NOT turn out (wah! I hate when I lose a step in my step by step posts!) but you place the stencil over the places you want on your CS and sponge away, remove and you are left with this shadowy image! I used both the flourish and the negative portion around it to stencil the two designs, which is why you see the black going over the edges of the card.

If it looks a little "swipey" in places, although it was the look I was going for (what I used to hear called MOP, or Messy on Purpose, like distressing) it is also because I couldn't locate any of my sponges or daubers on my diSASter of a desk after all the release stamping last week LOL! Not to be denied, (I had a card to finish!) I wadded up a paper towel and got dirty in the black ink, whatever works! I also sponged over my envelope to match. The more heavily you apply your sponged ink, the more crisp the details in your image will be; the less you use the more smoky and atmospheric they become, I love using a mix of both! Sentiment is from "Say it with Flowers".

Hope this different card from me inspires today to mix up some techniques! :)

Thanks for visiting! Have a good one!