Oil pastel backgrounds

I bought some water soluble oil pastels at the NEC last November for creating coloured backgrounds... this was being demonstrated by the PaperArtsy team. I had a very quick try out when I got home, but it wasn't very successful. So they have been lying about unused since then, but last week I decided I really must get to grips with them!! I soon discovered what I had been doing wrong the first time and managed to get a good result at last. You blend the pastels on the card with your finger and I really like the bright colours they create. You can also blend two or more colours together. I had to make some ATCs for a couple of swaps I am involved in, so decided to use the oil pastels for the backgrounds. I used various inks for my stamping including Versafine, Memento, Archival and dye inks - they all worked well on the oil pastel surface.

In the middle ATC I used Stampotique's Smile and the other two both use stamps by PaperArtsy.