Clean & Simple, Day 9

Hello again,

Here is my latest card, inspired by Jennifer's white on black stamping from Day 9 of the Clean & Simple card class.

I have to say that, while I quite like the finished product, I don't think I would regard this as a clean & simple technique - the colouring took me AGES...but I have learnt a few things about how to do a better job in future! I used Papertrey fresh snow hybrid ink and watercolour pencils, as they are the best pencils I have. However, they are quite soft & I think maybe weren't the best choice. They blunted quickly & I was too lazy and/or impatient to keep resharpening them to a fine point so it was quite difficult to stay within the white stamped image. After I'd coloured it all, I was unhappy with the blurred look I'd achieved where the colouring had moved onto the black cardstock, so I resorted to fixing up a few of the largest errors with a brush-tipped black marker. Of course, once I'd started this I kept finding more & more to fix, until eventually I think I outlined every single edge. The outcome was a much crisper image, but it took almost as long as the colouring did! In future I'd be MUCH more careful to colour accurately in the first place, and insist on super sharp pencils all the way through. I know Jennifer kept reiterating this...but now I believe her! I'd probably also try to leave the ink to dry for a day before I started colouring. I did heat set the ink, but there were still a few problems with the ink not being perfectly dry in some places.

Another tip: don't use textured black cardstock! It made the colouring much harder as it was difficult to get the colour into the valleys of the card, even in some places where the ink had managed to reach.

I've also become much more aware of the importance of accurate placement of various panels and matts in clean & simple card making. This card is a perfect example! I had the yellow matt accurately cut but when I stuck the black cardstock down I didn't line it up exactly enough, so two edges of yellow were wider than the others. So then I tried to fix it by trimming just the tiniest line from the two wider edges...and of course, went too far! When I've had similar issues with other cards I've made in the past, it's usually been relatively easy to cover up such inaccuracies with ribbon, a tag, or some other distraction, but in C&S designs it's impossible!

So....I learnt a lot form this card - which is, after all, the point of taking classes, huh?

Thanks for looking! If you try a similar technique yourself, I hope my experience helps save you some time.

-Kerri