Story of an Ink Pad

Many years ago, I bought the most gorgeous ink pad, I remember not where from. I think it was probably at a show somewhere. It's called "Splendor", a rainbow pad with twelve narrow strips of pigment ink in lovely pastel shades.

As soon as I saw that the challenge for Week 5 of Less is More is to use pastel colours, I knew just which ones I was going to choose. All of them!

This must be one of the quickest cards I have ever made! I used the ink pad as a stamp and simply pressed it gently down on to the card. I stamped the butterfly (Penny Black) and the sentiment (Clarity Stamp, I think, it was a freebie at a show) and that was it.

The Splendor ink pad was made by Tsukineko. It has been well used over the years, and a few years ago I emailed Tsukineko to ask them what colours I would need to re-ink it, as it doesn't say on the pad what the colours are. Sadly, I never received a reply. I've never seen any similar pads, and I guess they are long discontinued, but I was hoping that their current range of Versacolor inks would have equivalent colours. I could probably guess them, but the shading from one colour to the next is so delicate that I would hate to spoil it by getting the wrong colour.

I've just emailed Tsukineko again, although their website seems to be unavailable at the moment. I haven't heard of any problems with the company, so I will just have to keep my fingers crossed.....