Lavinia Stamps "Wild Flower" Birthday Card

Each Friday evening, Lavinia Stamps Design Team member Amanda Branston, does a Facebook Live demonstration.  Last week she showed how to use alcohol inks on a gel plate, so I decided I needed to try out the technique, resulting in this card.

I pulled out my gel plates, alcohol inks and alcohol blending solution ready to play.  I decided to opt for three shades of Alcohol Inks:  a yellow, a green and a blue.  I didn't make a note of which ones I used but I do remember that the yellow one was a pearlescent one, so has left a lovely sheen on the card.

With the gel plate on my glass mat, I squeezed some "Alcohol Ink Blending Solution" on to the gel plate, then dotted the three colours on top, starting with the lighter, working to the darker.  I added a little more blending solution to the gel plate then used the hand puffer - sorry I don't know what the proper term is, it's like a little fire belllow!  The puffer distributes the ink around the gel plate.  I then pressed a card over the gel plate, leaving in position for about a minute, before lifting to see the image it had created.

I tried this technique several times.   By the third attempt I had got the hang of it!  Lighter inks or less of the darker shades seem to work better... for me at least.

To clean the gel plate, I initially used my water spritzer, but there were still areas of ink left, so used some alcohol gel hand sanitizer which lifted the ink.  I then washed and dried the gel plate before returning to its storage tin.

I stamped the Lavinia Stamps in three shades of Versafine Clair inks, using:  Shady Lane green ink for the "Leafy Spray", Warm Breeze turquoise ink for the "Wild Flowers" and Nocturne, black ink for the dandelions.  I actually used four different Lavinia Stamps:  Open Dandelions, Drooping Dandelion, Make a Dandelion and Tall Dandelion.

I coloured the flowers with a mixture of Posca Pens, Signo glitter gel pens, Derwent Inktense pencils and Van Goch Pastel Pencils.  There is actually a lot of sheen and sparkle on this card, which sadly is not captured by the photograh.

I used Versafine Clair "Nocturne" black ink to stamp the "Happy Birthday" sentiment, which is part of the Waffle Flower "Essential Sentiments" stamp set.