Paris in the Spring (posted by Lesley)

Hi Everyone,

Well, I'm very relieved to say that I managed to complete June's project - unlike the one I chose myself (lol!) for May. Let's just say that is still a 'work in progress'. I have thoroughly enjoyed making my flag book so thanks a lot Elaine for choosing it. I hope you won't be bored as I also used the beautiful Paris stamps from Elusive Images as Jo did. I mixed mine with another Paris set and for the life of me, I can't remember whose they are. I'm hoping Jo's wonderful memory serves me well (as she was with me when I bought them) and that she'll be able to add the name ................... here! I also chose the Paris stamps because I needed so many on the same theme to be able to stamp 18 flag sides and I suppose it was inevitable that at some point two of us were going to choose the same stamps for a project.

I hope you don't mind a lot of photos because this project warrants them I think.

The front cover

I thorough enjoyed the painting with bleach technique for putting in the hightlights

I did almost mess up by not working out in advance which images I wanted to be on the 'top' side of the flag once they were attached to the spine

I also had an accident with one of my Distress Inks. I decided my inkpad needed re-inking but although I was using Old Paper I was thinking Tea Dye and I re-inked with the wrong colour. I now have an interesting new Distress Ink colour, lol, and had to use a different DI for my trio of colours which were Wild Honey, Crushed Olive and Tea Dye.

I also had one major moment of panic. Because the second set of stamps I used were clear stamps I didn't want to use Stazon for stamping the images so I decided to go with Ranger Archival Black. Then when I came to paint them with bleach I suddenly thought Uh! Oh! is the bleach going to remove the black image? I had also taken note of Willy's advice that some of the DI colours react differently to the bleach so I stamped an image and put some patches of the three colours onto some scrap card and 'painted' them to check them out before I risked ruining my carefully stamped flags. Yipee, all three colours disappeared beautifully and the Archival Black stayed put!

The back cover

Finally, another look at the front cover so that you can see the details a little better.

I'd like to say a big thankyou to Willy for her inspirational article in June's Craft Stamper magazine. It's been a brilliant project to do and I will definitely be using the painting with bleach technique again.

Hope you enjoyed your visit and many thanks for any comments you have time to leave.

Hugs
Lesley Xx