Under Sail

Hello fellow card lovers.  Well, I took my life in my hands and changed my blog a little, just the fonts anyway.  I am always a bit nervous of changing the look of the blog in case anything goes awry.  What prompted me was a post by Di about blogger and its problems which you can find here.  I left Di a comment thanking her for bringing this site to our attention and said I was afraid to change anything in case of problems.  Afterwards I thought "come on Pat, it really should be ok, just give it a go".  Well I did and everything appears to be alright.   The only thing that is slightly bugging me is that when the blog first comes up, and before it is fully loaded, it seems to flash up the old heading, but because the sizing of the new heading is a little different it flashes up the old heading on two lines before it finally loads and then puts up the heading with its new font.  I know this is just one of blogger's little foibles, and hopefully over time it will stop doing this.

Anyway, here is another male birthday card with a watery theme.  I enjoy making cards with a sea theme and I found this image that I thought would make a nice card and I used it in conjunction with my Gelli Plate and Distress Inks.

I covered the Gelli plate in four different colour Distress Inks, namely Faded Jeans, Tumbled Glass, Shaded Lilac and Peacock Feathers.  I swirled the ink straight from the pad over the Gelli Plate starting with the darkest colour, Faded Jeans, at the bottom, then the Tumbled Glass, then a small area of Shaded Lilac, and then the Peacock Feathers at the top, and then spritzed with a little water.  I made sure there weren't too many areas of white left and then pulled the print using a snippet of white card.  The print was quite good but decided to add some Shaded Lilac, again spritzed with water, to the bottom two thirds of the plate, put the print back on and was happier as the lilac had lightened and filled in the gaps.  I then decided to add  some Faded Jeans to approximately where the horizon line would be, and again added some water and pulled the print for a third time.

After printing the image, then colouring and cutting it out, I glued it in place.  It was a bit difficult to cut out as I had to cut off the lines attached to the sails which in turn were attached to the boat as they were too thin to cut out successfully.  After glueing in place I took a Spectrum Noir pencil and put the lines back in as accurately as I could and also added the birds at this stage.  The lines could perhaps have been a little sharper, but I went over them with a pencil to give a bit more definition, and decided not to chance my arm any more and just left it there.

I cut the finished picture down a little to give a good edge and mounted on a piece of dark blue card which in turn was mounted on to a square white card, then added the sentiment.  The only other thing I did was to create shading under and around the boat so it looks as though it is in the water and not on top of it.  I am fairly pleased with the result, and at a distance the horizon line seems to have morphed into a bit of distant coastline which is an added bonus.  The thing with this printing is that the results are quite random and unpredictable and if you'll excuse the pun you have to 'go with the flow' as it were.

Anyway, thank you for stopping by today.

Pat  x

I am entering the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 149 where we use up our snippets of card and paper.  Only a couple here - a large leftover piece of white and dark blue card.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.