A Venetian Summer Dream

Hi everyone and welcome. Looks like I've got a night of commenting to catch up on again after more positive feedback. Well that can be done is all good conscience knowing that the family have been out walking today in the stunningly beautiful Dimmingsdale, Staffordshire (thank you so much for that recommendation Rosie - perfect for the dog!) A hidden gem in our fair county, there are walking areas for the more (and less) adventurous, much of it covered by a canopy of forest which stops the excessive heat and sunburn. But enough eulogising, here's another location I wish I could be spirited away, namely Venice.

As part of my birthday 'haul' I was lucky enough to get some Penny Black stamps, including this one called 'Venetian Summer'. You'll be seeing a lot of it as it is such a detailed, stylish and versatile stamp.

This time round I utilised a couple of Tim Holtz stamping techniques, 'brushless watercolour' and 'spritz and flick distress'. For me the background cried out for a watercolour effect as it was a great way of adding the mix of building colours. I coloured the gondolas with coordinating watercolour pencils. The glamorous lady deserved a different treatment as I wanted her to stand out more, so she was stamped with a Memento ink and painted with a mix of Distress and watercolour pencils. Once dry, she was fussy cut and layered over the original image.

Now I don't know about you but I find that either the background comes together easily and the toppings are the problem, or the focal image is a doddle and the background takes a lot of thinking about. Rarely do the two come together easily! Luckily I stumbled upon the Scrap365 sketch challenge. As you know I like to use scrap layout sketches and ideas for cards (unfortunately that means I can't enter them into the challenge itself, but the designs are great).

Tipping the July sketch on it's side, I used some die cut/embossed/inked elements to pile underneath the water-coloured image. The dots just finished the whole thing off beautifully, matching up with the Venetian postmark; yes, there's Crackle Paint in the larger dots to add more texture, and remember, you can punch through the background card if you are layering it onto a base card too.

So I can now enter the current challenge over at the Penny Black blog;

And there's still just enough time to enter the current challenge over at;

The Artistic Stamper Creative Team blog - Ladies Day

Time to go get on with commenting and catching up on what you guys have been up to. Enjoy your crafting and take care of yourselves, hugs Jenny x