Tutorial - Reef Travellers Card

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create a card with a script background using all the sentiments from the Reef Travellers clear stamp set. You can recreate this card with whatever stamps you have at home, but they do need to be the same height and cut so they can be placed close together.

1. You'll need three water-based ink pads, some blending brushes or daubers, a piece of smooth cardstock, sentiment and images stamps and a spritz bottle filled with water. I'm using Evergreen Bough, Dusty Concord and Faded Jeans Distress Ink cubes and a piece of Bristol paper, which I find allows for smooth blending.

2. Brush the colours onto the cardstock, adding each colour in two or three places. Make sure you blend the colours together rather than leaving gaps between each.

3. Add a spritz of water over the top of the ink. To get a nice fine mist, hold the water bottle up high and mist just one time. Immediately apply a paper towel to soak up the water and lift the ink, which will result in tiny white spots across the surface of the cardstock. If you prefer a more subtle effect, leave the water on the paper to dry.

4. Lay all the sentiment stamps close together on an acrylic block taking care to line them up horizontally. Stamp on a piece of scrap paper and adjust the position of the stamps until they are all parallel. (NOTE: To help get the stamps nice and close, I used a pair of small, sharp scissors to cut away some of the extra polymer around the words. This won't harm the stamp as long as you do not cut through any of the raised stamping areas)

5. Use the lightest of the inks to stamp the words. If your inks are all very dark, consider stamping off the first layer of ink on a piece of scrap paper and using the second generation impression. I used the Evergreen Bough, which is considerably lighter than either the Dusty Concorde or the Faded Jeans.

6. Start the stamping at the top of the cardstock, allowing some of the image to protrude off the top and side edges. Continue stamping down the left side of the cardstock until you reach the bottom. Remember to move the stamp between impressions so that you don't end up with a tiled look.

7. Choose one of the sentiments and stamp in one of the darker colours. I positioned my sentiment at the bottom, right hand side of the card.

8. Now use the final colour to stamp two or three of the turtles. I allowed one of the images to protrude over the edge of the card. This gives the impression of continuity - the scene continues outside of the four sides of the cardstock.

9. To give the turtles some dimension I'm adding a shadow with alcohol markers. The alcohol won't interact with the water so I don't have to worry about smudging or smearing the colours I laid down earlier. I'm using a cool grey (C4) and softening it with a blender (0).

10. Add the grey to the right hand side and bottom of the images. Leave the top and left hand side plain to give the image depth. Once you've added the grey, use the blender pen to soften the shadow by swiping over the hard edge once or twice.

11. If desired, trim your card to fit the base. This will also tidy any inky or blotchy edges.

12. Choose a matching card base and attach your stamped cardstock. The colour you choose for the base will bring out the matching colour in your card. For example, the purple I chose for my base really brings out the purple ink I brushed into the background, and similarly, the card I created with the blue base brings out the images stamped in the same colour.

Stamps: