Monday 13 March 2017

The Usual Suspects, Hipster Style!

I've been after the new Hipster stamp set by Stamper's Anonymous since I saw the preview that Tim Holtz shared before Creativation; it arrived in the post on Saturday morning and I couldn't wait to get started. 

Right from the start, I envisaged the characters in a police line up and from there, the rest of the card just fell into place.  As I would be mounting the images onto an A5 card (A4 white, hammered card scored and folded in half to create a landscape blank), I cut a piece of Sheena's stamping card to 13.8cm x 20cm.  Only three characters would fit across the card, so I decided to use the three wearing suits, arranged them onto a large acrylic block and stamped and heat embossed them all at the same time, rather than trying to line them up individually.  I used Onyx Black Versafine ink and clear embossing powder, followed by distress inks and a water brush to colour the images. The suits and ties were coloured in a combination of Hickory Smoke and Black Soot and the sheep's head in Iced Spruce with an overlay of Hickory Smoke and Black Soot.  I deliberately kept the colour palette limited, so I mixed Black Soot and Hickory Smoke with Fossilized Amber to colour the bird and the head of the wheat and Pumice Stone with an overlay of Hickory Smoke for the cat.  To add a splash of colour and to tie all three images together, I added a touch of Fossilized Amber to the cat's eyes.  I didn't notice that I had missed the bird's beak until the end, so added Fossilized Amber with a touch of Wild Honey once the card was otherwise complete. 
Unfortunately, I left a mark in the top right hand corner of the topper, but I managed to turn it to my advantage. The next step was to create the impression of a police line up by adding 'height lines' behind the characters.  I started at shoulder height and used a Sakura micron pen to add four lines at 2cm intervals going up the card.  I made sure the lines were straight by lining up my piece of card and my ruler against the lines on my craft mat.  I then heat embossed the 6 and the 5 from the Numbers stamp set by Claritystamp at either side of the topper, using Onyx Black Versafine ink and clear embossing powder to match the rest of the stamping.  This not only covered up the splodge, but added to the impression that I was trying to create.  Three of the expressions which come with the Hipster stamp set were stamped and heat embossed onto a separate piece of white card, trimmed, matted onto black card and added using foam pads beneath each character.  The whole piece was then matted onto a piece of 20.5cm x 14.3cm black card and glued to the card blank.

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