Careful Manipulation of the Brayer

Hello Everyone!

Well this is not the most perfect card in the world, but it is entering new territory for me as I have never tried a card that invloves so much brayering in different ways and also only using one colour.  I saw that Andy's Stamping Group were creating a card along these lines which inspired me to wonder could think through the process and create a similar card.  I love how effective only using one colour can be.

I chose to use the Adirondak ink Pool.  I decided to use Clarity coated paper as I find this the best for brayering.  To begin with I created my hill masks.  I began by putting in the dark hill in the forground.  I then did the lake using the crumpled paper technique (for anyone who has not watched Barbara Gray on the tv this is where you scrunch up a piece of copy paper and run the brayer over it to pick up the textured effect.  This is then run across the paer and gives the water effect.  very simple yet very effective).  After this I used another mask to put in the backgound hills.  I finished the brayering off by doing the sky- this was done just using the remaining ink left on the brayer.  NB I must add that I now use a splodemat to get the desired amount of colour as it wastes so much ink that using endless copy paper. 

Then I came on to stamping.  Firstly I put the church in the foreground.  I used a little bit of ink on a sponge to ground it and add a bit of shade.  I then put in the baloons and the flock of birds.  I stamped one ballon off the page to try and create the illusion of perspective.  Lastly I stamped the trees.  I wanted to make thes look as if they were reflected in the water.  I still find doing reflections hard.  The brayer over the image and then rolled it onto the page.  It is a great effect but I still find matching up the reflected image with the original image very hard to acheive especially with such a small stamp.  Hopefully I have done okay though.

Combining so many techniques in one piece of artwork was a challenge in itself for me.  I think maybe I will have a few more goes at this using different colours. 

Thank you once again for reading this,

Love Emily xx