Butterflies and Blossoms, and my favourite things!

Well, some of my favourite things! The Sir Stampalot Challenge for May is right up my street, as is the prize! Butterflies and/or blossoms tend to appear on most of my cards, and anything by Tim Holtz would find a good home in my craft room, so this is one challenge I couldn't miss.

The only materials I've used for this card are paper and one shade of ink. Having finally managed to get my hands on some of the new Distress inks, I think Chipped Sapphire is going to become my favourite colour. More of a purply-blue than the denim of Faded Jeans, and just what I was hoping there would be in the new range. The flower stamp is an old favourite, by Funstamps. I've had it for years but use it often, as it's so pretty and versatile. Here I've used a favourite technique to colour it. I'm not sure what it's really called, but I call it the magic painting technique, because it reminds me of those children's painting books which appear to have blank pages until you paint over them with plain water, and the picture magically appears. I used to love them when I was a child (and confess I still do!).

I stamped the image with Chipped Sapphire, and then, with a fine paint brush and clean water, drew out some of the colour from the outline to shade it in. By using more or less water and blotting areas you want to be paler, it's possible to vary the depth of colour. When I've used this technique before, I've always done it with Adirondack rainbow inkpads, and this is the first time I've tried it with a single colour, but I really like the result. The Distress ink works perfectly for it. And to think that when Distress inks first came out, I didn't see what all the fuss was about! Now I wouldn't be without them.

The background stamp is Dots & Flowers by Hero Arts, the sentiment by Darkroom Door, the circle and oval shapes were cut with my Nestabilities and the butterflies were punched from paper coloured with the Chipped Sapphire ink. The overall effect reminds me of Delft Pottery. And, of course, blue and white is one of my favourite colour combinations.