Kanban 'Winged Dress' card

When I visited the Kanban outlet a few months ago, I was seduced by a beautiful acrylic stamp set that featured 3 large images of outfits and smaller crowns, cogs & watches. They are in the 'steampunk' style that is very popular at the moment. At the time, I was reading the book 'The Night Circus' and the stamps really made me think of the style described, so well, in the book. The set was £10 and I couldn't resist. This is the first card that I have made using the stamps.

I started with a piece of white card, cutting it to a size that would fit my main stamp image once I had added the wings to the dress (they are 2 seperate stamps). I used my 'pumice stone' distress ink on that white card to give it a vintage look. I was desperate to use my Spectrum Noir alcohol inks so I started by stamping the dress in a brown memento ink so that it would not bleed when I used the pens. As I wanted to add the wings, from another Kanban stamp set bought at the outlet, I stamped the middle part of the dress onto a sticky/post-it note to act as a mask. I placed this mask onto my initial image and then stamped the wings over it again using the brown memento ink.

I then wanted to colour my image (using my spectrum noirs) and chose a deep green colour. I have been practising my shading with the pens but I didn't feel that I had a colour close enough to the original one I wanted to use. I therefore decided to just use the one pen and build up the layers to create the shading. I started by colouring the whole dress so it was a flat solid colour and then used the same pen to go over the lines provided by the stamp and the shadow areas underneath the folds of the dress. It created a very good shading effect. I repeated the same technique on the hat using a brown pen and the flower on the hat in the same green one.

I was keen to foil the wings just to add a different colour and texture to the card. I did this by picking out parts of the image with my quickie glue pen and then using some gilding flakes to add a range of colours to the image. This is a really simple technique and one that I've really got into since getting some bargainous rolls of foil again from the Kanban outlet. It's a great way to tart up a cheap topper! You can see that in detail below-

I then used the small crown stamp, from my clothes stamp set, with the 'pumice stone' distress ink just to start to add some detail to the background as it looked a but plain. I wanted some of the images to seem as if they were partly behind the dress so I again used my mask to create that effect. I then used the cog stamp with the brown memento ink to add a different shade to that background. I then used the same memento ink to edge the topper piece.

I mounted my topper onto a piece of dark, earthy green card showing a 0.5cm border on each side. I then attached this to a, once white, A5 card front that I had distressed using the same pumice stone ink and crown & cog stamps. The only addition on the card base is that I also added a few splashes of alcohol ink in a range of brown shades- this probably wasn't a great idea, in hindsight, as the alcohol ink does bleed through the card quite a lot so I'll need some sort of cover/insert on the inside. Not exactly a 'happy accident' so much as a mistake!