Messy Crafting with inks and stamps

Hello everyone, I have lots of birthday cards to make but am finding it difficult to get inspiration at the moment.  To help get my mojo back I have been a playing with some arty inkiness recently, the Gothic Arch was for the UK Stampers Forum monthly challenge and the panel was inspired by a project in Craft Stamper using an old tin can.   

I had some corrugated card I saved to up cycle and used it in my first project.  The corrugated card was washed with gesso and small areas were covered in texture paste to fill in some of the channels.  The card was sprayed with inks, left to dry well before adding a stamped panel of tissue paper using Glue n Seal.  When the glue was dry I blending distress inks onto the panel and round the edges to add more colour.  Chit Chat sayings were added and a cog and arrow added.  I mounted the panel onto a piece of papermilldirect black card.

The Gothic Arch was cut from papermilldirect cream vellum card, a lovely weight for this project.  I stamped and clear embossed the Big Ben stamp, blended blue, purple and green distressed inks onto the arch and flicked it with water.  A few background stamps were stamped and a few stencilled areas added,  The wings were cut from a larger stamp, coloured  and added with 3D sticky pads and a stamped sentiment added underneath with 3D sticky pads.

Still struggling with ideas for my female cards this year, off now to the craft room to have a go!

Sylv xx