Smooshed Sky

I’m back! I do apologise for going AWOL. I wanted to make cards, but I just haven’t had the energy. I barely had the energy for it today, but did manage in the end. This card actually involves a technique that is new to me – smooshing.

I started by stamping one of the cats from The Greeting Farm’s Purfect Cats onto some watercolour cardstock. I also stamped it onto a post-it note from which I created a mask. With the mask in place I stamped the balloon stamp from the Panduro Hobby Balloon set.

Next I worked on my background. I don’t have any masking fluid, so I just had to be careful! I squished a blue ink pad onto some acetate, added a little water, then pressed the acetate onto the watercolour paper. I repeated the process with various shades of blue as well as a purple, building up the layers of colour. Every now and again I stopped to dry it with my heat gun.

I then wanted to add colour to the balloon. For some reason I decided to try ink smooshing again, and just managed to make a mess over the sky… Whoops! In the end I ‘fixed’ it just by adding more orange smooshing into the sky, to make it look like there were meant to be spots of orange there. I also used a wet paintbrush and some of the ink to fill in the gaps on the balloon.

For the cat I decided to use my watercolour pencils so that I would have a bit more control over the colour. I kept the colouring fairly simple, particularly as the background is so colourful.

The sentiment is from the same stamp set as the balloon. Once my panel was completely dry I stamped it and heat embossed in black.

The watercolouring and heating had caused a lot of warping, so I decided to cut the card stock down to be a panel. I still wanted a one layer look so I made sure it fit flush to my card.

I’m reasonably happy with how this turned out. I didn’t really make it easy for myself though – smooshing is a very free and loose technique, and trying to control it so that it wouldn’t go in the wrong places wasn’t the best idea. I’ll try to keep the technique for making backgrounds in future, and only do it over a full scene if I have masking fluid to protect the areas I want to keep clear!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

AAA Cards – Watercolour

Addicted to Stamps and More – Anything Goes

CAS Mix Up – Stamping, Smooshing, and your choice (I chose heat embossing.)

CAS-ual Fridays – One Layer Wonder

Cupcake Inspirations – Cats

Farm Fresh – Mixed Media

The Sisterhood of Crafters – Let’s Take a Vacation (I think the idea of flying away together implies a holiday pretty well!) (edit – where it was picked as one of the top 3!)