Clarity Calendar Challenge - July 2016

Well I never, two blog posts in two days! Nothing like a deadline to make you get your skates on is there?

Here is my attempt at the Clarity Calendar challenge for July 2016 - couldn't let this one pass by, as the Boy with the Birds is one of my all time favourite stamps.

Hope you like my attempt, and please forgive the little additions - I can't even follow a recipe without tweaking it, and I thought my splodges were more like a map of the world, so that's what I went with! It reminded me of that game Risk that my brothers used to play when we were small - Happy memories.

Susan x

Enchanting Eilean Donan Castle

Hello Again,

I created this card to try to capture a beautiful sunset at Eilean Donan Castle that John took back in April when we were out visiting the West Coast and Skye for his birthday. He took a fabulous photograph which we now have framed in our dining room, and that inspired my image. (You can see his photo, titled the blue hour on a recent blog on our guesthouse website using the following link: http://www.inverglenguesthouse.co.uk/favourite-locations-eilean-donan-castle)

It took me a couple of attempts to get the background the way that I wanted it. My first attempt using paints on the gelliplate was just too heavy, then I tried with inks and Gelli/stencil card, but again it was a little too bright and blotchy. Finally I settled on trying watercolour paper, which did the trick!

To create this background, I applied a mixture of adirondack and distress inks to the Gelliplate (Spiced Marmalade, Worn Lipstick, Peacock Feathers and Eggplant), spread it out with a brayer, then spritzed it with some water. I then used a piece of watercolour paper to take up the ink, and dried it with a heatgun before moving on to the next step.

I used Versafine black ink to stamp the castle and bridge image onto the Gelliplate, then using the Clarity Gelliplate mount, I stamped the "reflection" image onto the background, and restamped both images directly onto the card. To balance out the image, I stamped a few scots pine images on the right hand side, using second generation ink to stamp the reflection images. Finally I stamped the word and flourish into the bottom right hand corner, and cut down the paper to size and edged it with a black sharpie pen.


All the stamps I used were from Clarity Stamp : Eilean Donan Castle and Bridge stamps are available to Clarity Club members as back issue NDC stamps. The Forever word and scots pine stamps are part of the Scotland unmounted clear stamp collection, and the flourish is from the Letterbox kit.

Hope you like my card, and I'd be delighted if you left a comment for me below, Susan x