Oops, out of tea!

These are a couple of cards inspired by Rachel Jackson's work in Craft Stamper magazine. The first one is my version of one of Rachel's cards in the new edition of the magazine. I've followed Rachel's design closely although I had to use different stamps - on mine the flower stamp is by Elusive Images and the text by Hero Arts. The text panel was made by wrapping and glueing tissue paper around a piece of card. The tissue was stained first with coffee and then stamped onto when it was dry. Rachel actually used tea to stain the tissue in her project but when I looked in the cupboard for some tea bags I discovered I had run out! I can't stand tea and never drink it although I usually keep some in case friends visit. I seem to have a vague recollection of using the last tea bag for another craft project some time ago. So much for hospitality. I decided to add the butterfly to my card using the new free stamp with the magazine. This was also stamped onto some of the tissue paper which I glued to a scrap of card first.

The second card uses another technique by Rachel which appeared in the magazine in August 2009 - pressing distress ink pads onto a sheet of tin foil, spritzing with water, then using this spritzed ink as a 'stamp pad' for your stamp. I have used this technique to stamp Stampotique's Arty and the flourish at the bottom of the card. I then mopped up all the ink left on the tin foil with a piece of card to create the background. I felt that the image of Arty was too white, so I stamped her dress on a piece of spare inked card, cut it out and glued on top. This gave me a nice bit of solid colour in the centre of the image. The idea for the flower came from the latest Craft Stamper - using canvas die cut with Tim Holtz's Tattered Florals die, which I coloured with distess inks.