I love sweet pea stamps but...

A phrase I see often around blogger is "I love sweet pea stamps but..." and its usually about the colouring, I see some people terrified of them! Personally I find them less fiddly and faffy than some other designs as there is generally a large skin area, long flowing hair, tails or wings so not as fiddly or scary as you think. They also have excellent lines such as on the hair making it easy to identify highlight points. Some other designs have solid hair with just the outline, I actually find them much harder to do than sweet peas.

I usually make a wednesday/thursday post for Crafts & Me showing a sweet pea design so what I'll do for a couple of weeks is show you different ways of adding colour using different mediums. Not everyone has promarkers/copics or wants them so I'll cover some other colouring mediums and easy tricks.

This week is a very simple technique using Fantasy Film. Unfortunately its not the easiest thing to photograph but its highly iridescent and shiny, changes colour in the light and looks spectacular under halogen lights. It also gives a kind of 3d effect when you move it due to the small gap you get between the stamped image and the film.

For this one I have used September Rhythm and mother of pearl fantasy film.

Firstly colour just the skin tones on the stamped image and cut it down to ATC size. Ink up the stamp again using a permanent inkpad such as stazon or brilliance and place one or two pieces of fantasy film over the stamp. Next place a piece of greaseproof paper over the film and using a dry iron such as an encaustic one, iron on top of the greaseproof paper until you see the image showing through, 20 seconds is about right. If you've never used fantasy film before I have a couple of video tutorials here you might want to check out before starting!

Your image will be on the film now like below.

Next line your film up over your stamped image and secure it at the back. It might be a tiny bit loose but dont worry it adds to the effect :)

Add some bling and you have an ATC or card topper which is full of gleaming colour!
As there may be a tiny bit of a gap between the film and card it actually gives a 3d effect when you turn it and looks fab!

This one I used Dark Royalty and made the 3d wings using cosmic shimmer film in a contrasting colour. I coloured just the eyes with a promarker.

And finally this one is Dance of the Butterfly and I've coloured more on the film with promarkers. They do spread out rapidly so just a very gentle touch. As I used stazon ink (which reacts with promarkers) you couldnt blend colours like you do with card and paper so just choose areas to touch up with a solid colour.

You can also see the skin tones underneath on the card showing through quite well on this pic.

All of them have a pinky/blue/ pearl colour with the skin tones showing through below. Try different colours of fantasy film for different effects. Hope this has been of some use to you and I'll be back covering some different mediums soon.

All the stamps and fantasy film are available at Crafts and Me in the UK.