Sooner rather than Later: Layered Landscape Cards

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Layered Landscape Cards

I pulled out my Layered Landscape set the other day. This is a fun set to just play and experiment with. You can get such great effects with it, and (as you'll see in a second) there's not really a wrong way to use it.

For both of these cards I wanted to create many layers, and wanted the bottoms of the stamped images to kind of fade out - I didn't want a distinct line. To get that effect, I used a paintbrush to just add a wash of color to the bottom of a panel of watercolor cardstock. The landscape image was then inked with Distress Ink, spritzed with water, and stamped.

This wasn't perfect, you could still see a bit of a line, but I added more water with the paintbrush to soften it further, and since I was stamping additional layers over top, it worked pretty well.

I repeated this with several colors, and for the last two layers, used Distress Oxide ink, partly because I wanted to use those colors, and partly to see how those world react. Distress Oxides definitely have more solid coverage, but they also have a more distinct line.

I set the panel aside to dry, and when I came back and looked at it, realized that I kind of liked the panel upside down better. I had left some white space at the top of the landscape, so I went in with my watercolors filling that space in to create a dark mountain in the foreground.

The sentiment, also from the Layered Landscape set, was embossed on the panel and then it was popped up over the card base.

Here's a look at the card upside down, so you can see the progression of how it was stamped. See, there really isn't a right way to use this set!

I wanted to do a little more experimenting with the Distress Oxides, so for this next card I used the same basic technique, but used Distress Oxides instead.

As mentioned previously, because these have much better coverage, the line from the bottom of the image when stamped is more distinct. While I again wet the panel before I stamped each layer, for the oxides, I really had to work the bottom of the stamp to blend out the bottom. I also in a couple cases used my brush to move the pigment around a bit on the stamped image themselves to help with the blending.