Explore Nature Art Journal Card

Playing today in my 100 Day Project (post coming), creating an explore nature journal card. Using a cool stamp technique with Ann Butler products. I will be using some of Ann's stamps from Unity and her inks from Colorbox. The inks are designed to be used with fabric, wood & more, today I will be playing with paper. Can't wait to try them on fabric. They are juicy and I can see how they would work great on canvas. Her stamps are deeply etched & would be great in clay or modeling paste so I will need to play more! Here is my art card, followed by a quick tutorial.

I am also entering this in (SSS) SimonSaysStamps Monday Challenge. I have used their fun stamps as well, One With Nature set. The challenge this week is Summer Garden. If you want to play along they have 2 challenges a week & you can win a $50 gift card. Check out the blog here and the Monday challenge here. Now for my tutorial! 

I started my card by cutting the cover of a Sour Patch candy box. This will be going in my junque journal so I want to add ephemera of my current life & these are one of my favorite candies so I will leave the front and work on the back side.

Using that backside of the box, spraying with Glimmer Mist to put some color down. Ann's inks are super vibrant but I wanted a grungy look to my background so using yellow with a touch of light brown gave me a darker surface to create the effect I was going for. You can see a bit of the full color Aquamarine on the right edge of the card. If you check out my Instagram there is a quick video of me stamping.

I added ink on sketchy for the square pattern and stamped off first as I didn't want it to be too dark. Here with a sampling of Ann's stamps & inks.

To help you visualize the following technique here is how the SSS set comes. See how you have the background shape & the outline shape? The idea is to stamp your background in one color and the outline in another. This concept opens the door for many ways to use your stamps. Here are 2!

Now for the fun! I played around with the shapes in SSS set and created 2 different tree backgrounds.

 To create my pink background simply:

1. Ink up the background oval shape.

2. Stamp right on top of the oval shape with Ann's cool pattern stamp. This lifts the ink onto the pattern stamp but keeps it in that oval shape. You can see when I stamp it I have an oval of just the pattern. (upper stamped image)

3. Ink the tree outline stamp with black & stamp on top of the patterned oval to create the finished tree.

For the lime tree I used the lift off technique. (you can see this in the pink lower image)

1. Ink the matching background base stamp with Ann's Ink. 

2. Stamp a pattern with Anne's stamp on this background base stamp this time the idea is to lift the ink off the background stamp leaving just the pattern on. 

3. Stamp on white card stock.

4. Stamp the outline stamp on top using black ink to finish your tree.

I cut out the shaped part of the tree and adhered them on top of the stamped image on the art card. That way my tree trunks would show.

To finish my card I added Ann's stitch stamp around the edges. Doesn't it look machine stitched?  Then distress the edges with her Berry ink. The quote background is made using the square diamond from Ann's 1" Diamond & Plaid set from Unity. Her stamps have no edges so it is really easy to line them up! Simply ink with Aquamarine (see how pretty that color is) and stamp 3x in a row to create a cool background. Staple some leaves & voila! I hope you had fun with this tutorial. Leave me a comment with any questions or feedback & have yourself an inky day!