With a Light Flourish!

Hello everyone, Alison (butterfly) here, this time with a candle lantern.  Take one old jam jar, some alcohol inks, gilding flakes and the fabulous new Artistic Stamper Flourish Background stamp, and here's what you get.

Let me take you through some of the steps it took to get here...

I started by applying various blue/green alcohol inks to the exterior of the jar... The new colours Mermaid and Botanical are in there, as well as Meadow, Stream and Denim.

I just kept dabbing until I was happy with the effect - I love it on the inside too!  This would be a good place to stop if you just want a really simple way to light your summer garden evenings.

I debated doing some powder embossing with the flourish stamp, but in the end decided it was way too long since I'd played with the gilding flakes I bought way back when I started this whole crafting hoo-ha.  No idea any longer what colour mix this is - and I may even have mixed in various colourways together in my little plastic box.

As you can see, I didn't quite get a clean stamping with the Flitterglu on most of the sides of the jar (wouldn't want to attempt this on a round jar, by the way!), but I actually don't mind that, on two counts.  One: it means you get a really distressed look, like the lantern has been around the block a few times, and has some history...

Two: it means you get a proper look at the alcohol ink patterns in lots of places, which are attractive in themselves.

Again it was pretty cool from the inside...

... but since the flakes were multi-coloured, I found it a bit hard to tell what was going on with only the very translucent alcohol inks underneath.  It was too translucent... I think you can see what I mean here.

So I decided it needed an internal coat of colour too - South Pacific Fresco paint, painted onto the inside of the jar - just to give a slightly stronger background for the flourishes to show against.

I dyed some seam binding with Rusty Hinge Distress Ink and wound some gold and beige satin ribbons together with it to create the finishing touch at the top.

It's a bit wild and extravagant, but I thought it suited the rococo style of the candle lantern itself.

As usual, it's been difficult to capture a photograph of how it looks with the candlelight illuminating it from within, but I hope this gives you a slight idea of the glow.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  You've still got about a week to come and play in our Spring is Coming challenge here at The Artistic Stamper.  You have to include some stamping, but you don't have to use Artistic Stamper stamps for that... although if you do, you automatically get a double-entry to the prize draw.  Hope to see you there!

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper stamps - Flourish Background
Alcohol Inks - Mermaid, Botanical, Stream, Meadow, Denim
Seam Binding
Distress Inks - Rusty Hinge
Gilding Flakes - probably a mixture of various colours
From my stash - Jam Jar, Satin Ribbon (but there are plenty of options here too)