Step #1

By Hand Artist Mystery Stamp
Detailed Background Technique
ID: Art Is Letting

Due Date: Feb 27th, 2007

Supplies:
White Glossy Cardstock
Favorite Rubber Stamp ("Art is Letting" by Quietfire Design)
Favorite pigment stamp pad (Brilliance Dew Drops "Midnight Black")
Portfolio Water Soluble Oil Pastels
Tissue paper or thin cotton cloth
Clear Emboss Stamp Pad
Clear Embossing Powder (& heating tool)

Start with a larger page than your finished piece will need, so you can hold down areas while you are rubbing the pastels.

Stamp your quote and clear emboss, heat set and let cool

For the first layer use the light colors in the box ( I used the yellow, orange, red, pink, light blue and limey green) in stripes. I've also done one with just abstract blobs all over. Either works well. 

Step #2

Rub with your finger to heat up the oil in the pastels and move the color around. Be careful not to remove all the color.  

Step #3

Using the tissue paper or cotton cloth, gently wipe away most of the color in the quote area, blending into the surrounding areas.

Color your page with the black and then go over it with the violet. you'll still see some of your underlying colors. That's ok. You can also very very lightly rub to blend some of the top layer. But not too much or when you go to scratch there won't be anything to peek through.

Step #4

Cut out your heart shape, scratch in your words with your choice of implement (I used a C-5 calligraphy nib). You can use an x-acto blade or a script nib or whatever. 

I then used my heat tool to melt the oil pastels a bit. When you're moving your heat tool over an area you'll see the shine occurring as the tool heats the oil. Let cool completely. It removes some of the built up and raised edges from the scraping and coloring. PS: be careful, melting the oil in the pastels DOES NOT set the color. It is still in a fragile state.

Very gently press (don't rub) your clear embossing stamp pad over the whole heart and then dust with your clear embossing powder, heat set.

The heart is now ready to be glued to your card. 

For the heart only, I rubbed some Dorland's wax over the surface to get a nice smooth feel to the heart.

ATC Quarterly "Frida"

This is a happy accident that happened when I was creating this ATC using the above background. (not happy when it happened, but happy with the after results)

I glued the clear embossed jagged lines to the card, added my lettering and then used a couple coats of Crystal Clear Spray to protect the lettering. Little did I know it would act like a crackle medium. Sections were lifting off the lines and I couldn't press them down again. They were so fragile.

Now this was a finished card and I said, what do I do know. So I re-heat embossed the whole card and love the way some of the color in areas was pulled away. The whitish blotches you see in the jagged lines are areas that were crackled / distressed and merged when re-heated.