Postcard wallet and gift set - Chris Dark

 

Hi everyone, Chris (sketching Stamper) here today and I'm delighted to be joining in with everyone as guest designer for November, so a big thank you to Jennie and Emma for the invitation.

For my first of three guest designers posts I've made a postcard wallet and postcards in a mixed media style.
Everything is made from 300gsm watercolour paper which will stand lots of  ink and paint layers. I cut everything to size using the postcard template stamp from the Carte Postale stamp set by Katy Fox.

For the backs of the postcards  I stamped all the stamps from the set in waterproof ink so that whatever ink or paint was picked up during the creation of the fronts of the postcards would stay put.

My first postcard front uses the gorgeous large flower image from the Encylopaedia Botanica stamps by Katy Fox and I've given the stamp a different look by using it as a template for a painterly style using acrylic paint and black india ink. The mixed media background is made up of several layers of paint and stamping in ink and paint to give depth and I added doodles with the black ink and a white gel pen. For all of my stamping I used combinations of the following stamps and stamp sets:

Regency, Harlequin and grid background stamps, the A5#1 Borders set, the Swirls, Splats and Dots set, the Encylopaedia Botanica set and stamps from the Carte Postale stamp set by Katy Fox.

To achieve this painterly look for the flowers I stamped in black ink over the mixed media background and then painted the image with Distress and DecoArt Americana paint making sure to go over the stamp outline. When the paint was dry I used a dip pen and black india ink to add the outlines back in. The same outlines and shading can be followed by stamping down onto scrap to use as a guide but I didn't do that on this occasion. The outlines can be omitted to give yet another look.

All the postcards were finished off with ink splats by tapping the dip pen over the card and a coat of sealer to give a slightly glossy postcard look.

 The wallet is again painted and stamped mixed media style with variations of the above listed stamps. To create the wallet I measured a postcard, allowed some room all around, multiplied by three with a few millimetres extra for the folds. After cutting to the desired width and depth I scored into thirds, cut off a portion of the card on the right side, folded in and taped down to form a pocket. I coloured some seam binding ribbon with paint and taped it to the back of the central third and tied round to close the wallet up.

I was also able to create a gift set this week for a family birthday and used the Regency Background stamp with Faber-Castell Gelato sticks direct to stamp for the varigated background paper for the card and to cover the plain white card of the die cut box. A pretty, girly effect is achieved using the same gorgeous background stamp that I used for the mixed media effects above by using a different medium and a more pastel range of colours. 

Hope you have some creative time today and I'll be back with my second project in a couple of weeks.

Chris x