Mostly Neutral for The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog

Hi everyone and welcome. Sara Emily is hosting the latest challenge over on The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog. She's called it 'Mostly Neutral'; "For this challenge, I would like you to use mainly neutrals, but I will allow you one accent color or use of metallic accents. Let's see how you use beige, ivory, taupe, brown, black, gray or shades of white or any combination of these to make any vintage/shabby chic project you would like."

The Design Team will choose their four top picks with the overall winner receiving a $25 gift certificate to go on a spending spree at The Funkie Junkie Boutique. All four top picks will receive badges to display on their blogs in recognition of their outstanding contributions.

Staying neutral was not a problem since I love making neutral backgrounds on which to pile more colourful focal points. The challenge came in selecting which colour would be the accent colour. As you'll see in the card below the final decision came down on the side of red.

I took photos as this card (and two extra) were created to show the process. I started with pieces cut from a large sheet of paper that I'd covered with brown watercolour paint, blended charcoal patches, white gesso, tea staining and finally stencilling with some plaster paste and the Tim Holtz 'Stitched' Layering Stencil.

For a previous project I had pulled some neutral coloured prints onto tissue using a Gel Plate; I picked a couple of these to add to the backgrounds and tore them into strips/chunks, applying them to the backgrounds with soft matte gel medium.

Here's a trick for helping to work out where to stamp an image and place the elements to compliment it; stamp your image onto a piece of clear waste packaging and you'll be able to figure out exactly how your finished piece could look.

After adding the tissue prints I added a blurred line with a charcoal pencil - being able to see how this would work with the final design as shown above was really helpful for this step.

After stamping Wendy Vecchi's 'Bouquet' image directly onto one of the backgrounds using black Archival ink and a stamping platform I used the matching stencil that comes with the stamp to apply white gesso over the top.

Keeping the stamped background in place I re-stamped it before applying 'Ruby' and 'Sterling' Acrylic Paint over the top. A final re-stamping with the black ink added the detail back onto the image. It was only at this point that I removed the now stamped background from the stamping platform.

To finish the card I added Glossy Accents over the stamped image; you could alternatively use translucent gloss gel medium over the top by applying it through the matching stencil. Finally some Wendy Vecchi Liquid Pearls 'Carnation Red' dots were applied along with white cotton lace (with a little tea staining to make it less obvious). The finished collage was layered onto a kraft background and a white card blank.

You'll have seen me mention three cards earlier; here are the other two which were created in the same way, the first with Wendy Vecchi's 'Simple Reality', the second with Wendy Vecchi's 'Spring Bouquet'.

So that's my take on the theme 'Mostly Neutral'. For even more inspiration my amazing team mates have come up with their own projects for this challenge so make sure you hop on over and check them out HERE.

For now, thanks for visiting,
Jenny xxx

Products used to create this card are available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique and are listed/linked below.

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stamp It Stencil It - 'Bouquet'

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stamp It Stencil It - 'Simple Reality'

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stamp It Stencil It - 'Spring Bouquet'

Tim Holtz Layering Stencil 'Stitched'

Tim Holtz Ideaology Trimmings, Lace

Dina Wakley Media Acrylic Paints and Gesso