Sepia & a new release

Good Monday morning to you, my friends. How about those Packers? While my husband watched the game, my daughter & I put together a 1000 piece puzzle. I just sorta kept one ear tuned into the game. She came over for lunch & wanted to do a puzzle, since it had been quite a while since either of us had put one together. It was a fun time together.

Since I teach a monthly technique class, I'm always looking for fun, yet easy techniques to teach, whether an old standby or something new. Recently I came across a technique called Sepia. That's pretty self-explanatory - brown tones like an old photo. Last weekend I tried it with the instructions given, but I just couldn't like how anything turned out, and I will not teach something that I'm not comfortable with or that has very inconsistent results. I don't mean that every piece has to look exactly the same, but rather, the end quality of the technique has to be consistent. So later this week, I decided to play around with the instructions again and see if I could change it to get better results. I'm pleased to say that it worked. Briefly, you stamp your image with timber brown stazon (or other permanent brown ink) and then paint with white pigment ink, and a light and dark brown dye ink.

My first card is a newly released digital image from Squigglefly, called 'I can hear the ocean'. The challenge this week on the Squigglefly blog is 'Living on the Edge'. Be sure to go check out all the designers cards and play along.

Before I printed the image, I adjusted the color a bit to get a brown instead of black (don't ask - I'm in no way an expert - I just played with the red & green a bit). Then I used the white and brown inks to color the image. I die cut it with a circle nestabilities die from Spellbinders and sponged the edge with browns. I added a cream circle and a lacey circle in chocolate behind the image. I painted over the shell with crystal effects, but it doesn't show up much in the photo.

The sentiment is from a set of words I bought years ago locally. I'm really bad at keeping track of what dp I have, so I don't know the manufacturer. There is a chocolate layer and the card base is creamy caramel.

My second card with the sepia technique uses all the same cardstock colors and inks. The image is from Fast & Fabulous (SU). The sentiment is from My Sentiments Exactly, and the background is made using Bella Toile & Linen (SU), with a lot of sponging involved.

I also used Spellbinders petite ovals and ribbon tags trio, along with some chocolate grosgrain ribbon and dimensional tape.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Have a wonder-filled week.