Chess Game

Hi there everyone.  I needed another male birthday card so I decided to make a card using the Chocolate Baroque - Art of Chess stamps.   They come with a background, but I decided not to use this but make my own chess board.  Another make of stamps I love are Claritystamp, and Barbara Gray has her own blog on which she shows some great techniques and does some in depth demos.  One of them was to make your own chess board with the pieces on it.  She has a stencil for her chess pieces, but as I already have these lovely ones from Chocolate Baroque I thought I would just try to make the chess board and give it some perspective as Barbara did in her demonstration.  I have to say that after she did this demo which was rather fiddly as there is a lot of masking to do, she brought out a stencil for the board to save some time, but as I haven't got round to getting one yet, I thought I would give my own version a try.

I began by pencilling out the board by imagining a vanishing point beyond the board for the verticals and for the horizontals I tried to bring the lines gradually closer together, and although it is no way all that accurate, it is actually the first time I have tried something like this, and it does look more realistic than just doing all the squares the same size.   When I was happy with the shape I stamped the pieces on the board using Black Archival ink and then stamped and cut out a set of masks which I sprayed on the back with Stick N Spray which makes things temporarily sticky.  After masking the pieces I masked off one black square at  time and coloured with a mixture of Memento London Fog and Tuxedo Black and Adirondack Stonewashed.  The masking tape I prefer is Scotchtape Removable Tape which I have had for absoulutely ages, and I'm not even sure where I got it now, but I have tried lots of different tapes and have found many to be far too sticky and tend to take the surface off the card when removed.

 For the dark chess pieces I decided to use the same colours I used for the chess board, and the white pieces I coloured with Adirondack Butterscotch toned down with the Memento London Fog for the shadowy areas.  Finally I used Antique Linen Distress Ink and a little of the Butterscotch round the edges and randomly across the white squares which gives it an aged look.  I have to say this was in part to cover some of the ink which inevitably seems to find it's way on to areas where you would rather it didn't.

I have to say I can see why Barbara decided to make a stencil for the chess board after doing this technique, as about half way through I did start to question whether I was a bit mad to be doing this, but there was a sense of satisfaction on removing all the masks, and seeing the end result, which in some respects turned out better than I thought it might.

If you would like to take a look at Barbara's blog post you will find it here.  Hers has more squares and pieces, so far more masking than mine, and she placed the pieces and then put the chess board around them, but personally for me I felt it was easier to do it the other way round, but I have to say Barbara's is absolute perfection.

Well, another weekend is looming so I hope it is a good one for you all.  Thank you for taking a look today, I really do appreciate it.

Pat x

I am entering the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop where we use up snippets/scraps of card or paper.  I used up pieces of white and black card.  This is my second  card this week as there is a special challenge on top of the normal weekly challenge which calls for three cards over two weeks and hopefully I will get to enter another next week.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Father's Day/Masculine.