Iridescent Wings

Hi everyone, having recently made a card featuring a Visible Image dragonfly (here), I remembered I also have a beautiful contemporary style stamp set of dragonflies and flowers, which is best part of 20 years old but has hardly ever been used! I really enjoyed painting the iridescent dragonfly wings (inspired by watching ‘Springwatch’!) so I thought it was high time for me to rectify this neglect, and I determined to use the largest dragonfly stamp in the set - here’s the result.

I die cut a stitched square frame from white card, then used a separate snippet to make a piece  that would fit behind the aperture. I applied a soft wash of iridescent watercolour paints to the small panel, then when dry stamped with a Crafty Individuals script stamp using 2nd generation Twilight VFC. I stamped the focal dragonfly onto a separate snippet of white card using Twilight VFC and heat embossed, then painted the wings with iridescent watercolour paints topped with Spectrum Noir sparkle pen, fussy cut and set aside. I stamped part of a large floral stamp from the same set across the corners and painted the flower petals as above. I stamped the sentiment then assembled the card, added some silver metallic Posca accents and faux spatters, then matted onto a teal border and a 6” square card blank.

Stamps: The Stamp Man Daisy Daydreams; Crafty Individuals script stamp; Visible Image Birthday Wishes;

Media: Versafine Clair (Twilight); Cosmic Shimmer watercolour paints (Jade Mint, Sapphire Sparkle); Luminarte watercolour paint (Bolivian Blue); Posca pen (silver); Spectrum Noir sparkle pen (clear); clear embossing powder; 

Tools: Hunkydory Moonstone Duo-Stitched Square dies.

Challenges I would like to enter:

Alphabet Challenge - E is for embossing, wet or dry

Colourful Options (June) - Tiffany Blue (2nd entry)

(Aqua, teal, turquoise, blue/green)

Girlz and the Art of Letters #30 - D is for ..

(dragonfly)

Neglected Stuff (June) - Use Your Neglected Stash

Pick 3 #6 - Pick 3

(Frame/sparkle/sentiment) - sorry but the graphic would not download from Pick 3 challenge site

{PIN}spirational # 338 - Blue  and Green (2nd entry)

Simon Says (Wednesday) - Anything Goes (2nd entry)

Snippets Playground #535 - Use Snippets

Try It On Tuesday - In the Garden

Word Art Wednesday #758/759 - Anything Goes (2nd entry)

I actually had a disaster with this card, which miraculously I somehow managed to rescue. The card was all finished, and the following day I went into town where I bought a silver Posca pen to replace the one I used on this card, as the nib had broken. Anyhow, when I got home, in a classic case of “can’t leave it alone” syndrome, I decided to add slightly more silver dots to the dragonfly wings. At some point I pressed down fractionally too hard, resulting in a huge blot of silver ink on one of the wings - WAH! Luckily I acted fast, blotting it off with a baby wipe then paper towel. This left a shimmery halo effect… at this point the saving grace was the fact that the wings were painted with shimmery metallic watercolour paints - I whipped them out speedily and applied another layer to the damaged wing, which effectively covered up the silver Posca shimmer … phew! Who knew I could move so fast in a heatwave??

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Hugs,