A House In The Country

Hi guys.  I had fully intended to post earlier than this but you know the story by now about how time flies etc...!!  As you know a few days ago I was talking about making Dad his Father's Day card - well this is what I finally came up with!  My Dad was born in the country and grew up there and only moved away when he married my Mum - he has always dreamt of returning to the country but unfortunately the price of houses in the middle of nowhere are out of his monetary reach so I decided to recreate a house in the country for him for his Father's Day card this year!

As I mentioned previously I always struggle with mens cards as not only do I find subject matter hard to find but I also have to resist on 'prettying' them up.  However this year I think I rose to the challenge as I didn't even apply any glitter glue - although I did want to!!

For the background of the card I used some scenic stamps by Stampscapes which I stamped using Frayed Burlap Distress ink onto green Bazzill card.  I have got loads of these stamps in my stamp collection which I absolutely love but it has been quite a few years now since I have played with them.  The detail on these stamps is just amazing and the way these stamps join seamlessly together is fantastic.  For those of you who have never come across these stamps before they are sold in the UK by Serendipity. Click here to go view their website.  The quality and detail of the stamps is outstanding.  After using them for the background on Dad's card it has made me want to start using them again to create proper scenes - I just need to find some time to play!!

Anyway here is a closer look at the bottom right corner of the card.  Because of the texture of the Bazzill card and the fine detail of the stamps - it gave a patchy effect which I actually found perfect for this type of background as I really didn't want a solid look for this. (I also decorated the inside of the card too with these stamps but I'm afraid I got carried away and wrote in it before I photographed it so I'm afraid I can't show you the inside!!)

For the main panel I chose to use stamps by Art Impressions (availabe from my good friends at Sir Stampalot) which is yet another stamp company that I love but rarely have time to play around with now!  (For those of you who have got my Basics and Beyond DVD I used the same techniques to create this panel as I showed in the last section of the DVD where you ink up the stamps using water based pens and stamp them out several times fading out the ink.)  For the house and fence I actually used a dark grey pen to colour the stamp and then watercoloured the images by scribbling the pens onto a palette and picking up the colours with a damp paintbrush.  The wording was taken from my Fancy Flourish stamp sheet. (Available from The Craft Barn.)

Here's a closer look at the main panel so that you can see the detail a bit clearer.  Making these sort of cards where you are using lots of different stamps to create a scene or a picture really appeals to me as this is when stamping starts to become more of an art form although it's a bit scary as well when you haven't done it for a while!!

Anyway I hope you like it - it's a bit different to anything else I've posted for a while I know, but sometimes it is nice to return to things you haven't done for a while!!  It is actually a year since I have picked up any Art Impressions stamps and probably about 5 years since I've done any sort of work at all with the Stampscapes range but bizarrely I still rate them among my favourites - strange eh??