Saturday 12 March 2016

Around the World Blog Hop - Flowering Fields


It’s time for another Around the World Blog Hop, taking you on a tour of the globe without even leaving your seat. During the hop, you’ll visit a blog in each country served by Stampin’ Up!® and see some really beautiful projects by talented demonstrators.  You may have arrived here from the talented Julie Davison’s blog, but if not, don’t worry as there is a full list at the end of this post. 

Our theme this time is “floral” which, despite my brave foray into this area earlier this year, doesn’t really come naturally to me. I’m much more comfortable with leaves and animals. But for this project I dug out my trusty watercolour paper to have a play with an old favourite, the salt technique. 

For this technique, you create a watercolour wash (I used Old Olive and Island Indigo reinkers) and then sprinkle seasalt crystals on top. The salt absorbs the liquid around it, creating unpredictable and beautiful patterns. You must allow the paper to dry completely before brushing off the salt. 


On top of the dried project, I stamped flowers in Stazon and then coloured them using my Wink of Stella brush as a blender pen. Did you know you can do this? You can use the clear Wink of Stella brush pen to pick up ink from your inkpad lids and paint with it. Simply brush Wink of Stella onto scrap paper to clean it off again. So the flowers are beautifully shimmery in real life, although the photo doesn’t do them justice. 

I next stamped in Old Olive around the edges of the tag using one of my new favourite stamp sets, Timeless Textures (which I also stamped on the Whisper White card base). 

I was in full technique mode, so even dug out my heat gun to emboss the greeting. I love the look of white text on black and simply stamping is never enough. 

To make my efforts worthwhile, I made several of these tags which I have saved for future projects....



But now it’s time to head off to the next blog on your tour, which is in the Netherlands. Please check out Miriam’s project and be sure to leave her a comment! And if you lose your way, here’s the full list of blogs taking part. Thanks for visiting and enjoy the rest of your journey!

Marie-Josée Trudel (Canada)http://alapause.blogspot.com 

Alisa Tilsner (Australia) http://www.alisatilsner.com
 
Julie Davison (United States) http://juliedavison.com
 
Helen Read (United Kingdom) http://allthingsstampy.blogspot.com
 
Miriam van Eyden (Netherlands) http://miriam-cardsandscrapping.blogspot.com
 
Kristine McNickle (New Zealand) http://www.creativestamping.co.nz
 
Anke Hämsch (Germany) http://leipzig-stempelt.blogspot.com
 
Liz Goldhawk (Canada) http://lgoldhawk.blogspot.com
 
Cécile Ortiz (France) https://lezardsdecilou.wordpress.com
 





16 comments:

  1. Liebe Helen,
    die Idee mit den colorierten Tags auf den Karten ist wunderschön!
    Liebe Grüße,
    Heike

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  2. Die Tags sind phantastisch Helen. Eine sehr schönes Projekt. The tags are fantastic Helen! A beautiful project. LG Anke

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  3. Congrats, Helen, that's very nice x x

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  4. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful! Do you know if regular salt will work as well. I have never heard of seasalt crystals.??

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    1. Thanks for your nice comment, Jennifer. I can only suggest you try it! Regular salt, the type you get from a salt pot with one small hole, will probably give you a more "refined" look, with tiny dots - but they might be so close together that you don't get much of an effect. Look out for the big crystals that you put in a salt grinder (they probably don't have to be sea salt but that's what we usually use); the benefit of bigger crystals is that each individual piece creates a "flower" effect around it, which is the beauty of this technique. Hope you manage to find some!

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  5. So beautiful Tags, Helen! Very nice!

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  6. j'adore le travail de fond de ces étiquettes elles sont supers belles

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  7. Just love these tags. Can't wait to have a go. Gorgeous !

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Thank you so much for taking the time to comment.

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This is my personal blog and my sole responsibility as an Independent Stampin' Up!® demonstrator. All images are © Stampin' Up!® All content including photographs, projects and text are © Helen Read, unless otherwise stated. Please feel free to copy my ideas for your personal use and inspiration - if you are a SU demonstrator you may use these ideas for your events but please give credit where it is due. Please do not use my ideas for monetary gain, competitions or publication. The images on this blog - including blog buttons - should not be copied and used elsewhere on the internet or on CDs.