Friends are Flowers that Never Fade

Last Friday my little stamping group decided to play with spray inks. I had not used spray inks prior to this and it was quite a learning experience! We started by putting a coat of gesso on the page. This allows the ink to move around freely, it won't soak into the page.  The actual colors are deeper and richer than shown. Sorry about the photography, my iPhone doesn't come near my Nikon DSL but I was in a hurry! :-)

Click to enlarge

We used Ranger Color Wash Spray and Tim Holtz Distress Stains. After I had some red and yellow swimming around on the page of my 7 x 10 Canson Mixed Media journal, I heat dried it and added some texture with stenciling. Molly had a Crafters Workshop flower patterned stencil, so I used a credit card to swipe some gesso through the openings. I put several random splotches around the page. It looked really cool! Then more spraying fun. Note: gesso comes in various thicknesses. I was using the Claudine Helmuth gesso which is very thick and comes in a jar, not a bottle.

However, I had not really thought it through. I was thinking the acrylic gesso would act as a resist, but of course gesso is a primer and it is made to hold the paint that goes on top of it. I want to try this again with some acrylic paint, which I think will resist the subsequent layers of color. Still, the dimension of the gesso flowers caused the spray inks to pool around each raised area which gave a neat effect!

Then I added the words with my all time favorite alphabet set, the retired Stampin' Up! Collage letters and numbers. The Friendship stamp is part of a series of words by Kelli Everett from The Uptown Design Company, now sadly out of business. I used Stazon black ink; the stickiness of the ink was a plus on the non-porous surface. I used a black Sharpie to doodle flower outlines, stems and leaves.  A date stamp was added last.

Supplies: (Note - if you are reading this in email or a reader, you will have to go to the blog to see the supplies, just click the title of this post.)

Linky Tools - Personal Link Library!
There has been a lot of buzz about InLinkz new "Link Manager" tool.  I sent owner and programmer Brent Riggs a request to add this functionality to Linky Tools.  Three days later Brent contacted me to test the new functionality, and there is no extra cost or separate subscription! I can't tell you how wonderful it is working with Linky Tools.  I will do a separate post about the new Personal Link Library functionality; it is so cool. I just add all my supply links with thumbnail one time and it is so fast to do. Then I can pull those links onto any list I like! You'll be seeing lots of neat supply lists like this from now on. What tickled me (even more than the amazing responsiveness and quick turnaround) was that Brent featured my blog in one of the demonstration videos. I hope you'll check it out, my 90 seconds of fame, LOL!

This was a really fun project. The quote seemed perfect as I was having nice messy fun with friends while making flowers! This page will always bring back memories of a fun evening.

Please leave a comment; your comments are what keep me blogging!
:-)

Edited to add:
Several people commented on the alphabet I used - Stampin' Up! Collage Alphabet and Collage Numbers. Although they are retired, the two sets are readily available on eBay. Click here to see the search on the US eBay, or search for this string in your country's eBay: 
"stampin up" ("collage alphabet", "collage numbers") 
This will search for the alphabet OR the numbers set, so you will see both! They are available at all price points.