On the Beach

Hi there everyone.  Well,  I suddenly realised the other day that just over a year has passed since I started writing this blog, and actually it has gone by really quickly.   I wasn't sure whether it would still be going a year on, but thanks to you all it has exceeded my expectations and I have so enjoyed getting to know my fellow bloggers in this wonderful crafting community.  Hopefully I will be sitting here next year looking forward to the start of my third year.

I love doing sea themed cards and this one is for a male birthday.  Looking at it I hope it can be considered to be a masculine theme, personally I think so.  Anyway, I used some stamps I have from Crafty Individuals called Seaside Treasures.  I also brought the Gelli Plate out for a bit of an airing.

I started by blending the colours on the Gelli Plate with my brayer to create the background scene.  For the sky area I used some Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass, Peacock Feathers and Faded Jeans.   I laid it down in stripes with the Faded Jeans at the top, then the Tumbled Glass and then a very little Peacock Feathers and used a brayer to blend.  Then for the beach I laid down Walnut Stain at the bottom, then a small amount of Spiced Marmalade and a larger amount of Sunshine Yellow, and again blended with the brayer.  Finally I loaded my fingers with a little water and dripped it gently on to the Plate.  I have some nice 7" x 7" Clarity white card which I use, so laid this over and pulled the print.  It worked beautifully, and this was my base on which to put the shells etc.  The shells were stamped with Archival Black, on to a snippet of white card and coloured using Sunshine Yellow and a little Shaded Lilac, Spiced Marmalade, Adirondack Espresso, and Black Soot, and then stuck down with Pinflair Glue Gel.   For the birds and the sentiment I used Archival Black.  I darkened the edges at the bottom with some Walnut Stain, and round the top Some Faded Jeans, and using a cocktail stick I added some shadows and texture with little bits of Adirondack Espresso.

As I already put a sentiment on the outside I added the 'Happy Birthday' on the insert.

Thank you for dropping by today, and thank you again to everyone who has made my first blogging year such fun.

Pat x

P.S  As some people have asked, and perhaps I didn't make it clear in my explanation, for this background I put the ink from the pad straight on to the plate and then used a brayer to smooth it out.  It is best not to pat one colour over another because of contamination of the ink so try to keep them separate, and frequently remove excess ink from the brayer to keep the colours clean.  As far as I know only water based products should be used with the Gelli Plate.Hope this is of some help.  Barbara Gray at Claritystamp does a lot of work with the Gelli Plate, and you can find her blog here, and there are lots of other sites too featuring Gelli Plate techniques. 

I am entering the following challenge:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 144.  I have used just some snippets of white card this time.