Tia's Tips: Smooshing is a crafter's technique of taking a liquid medium, applying it onto a sheet of acetate or using a Gelli-plate and pressing it-or "smooshing" it onto cardstock. It's a wonderful technique that allows you to layer colors and maintain some control over where and how much medium is laid down. I say "medium", because "smooshing" can be done with a variety of liquids; alcohol inks, watercolors and acrylics.
Image: Hey Girl- https://www.joyclair.com/
The Project:
I have been so excited about joining the team at Joy Clair Designs and knew for my first design I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone. My eye was immediately drawn to the beautifully classic lines of 'Hey Girl'. I wasn't certain I could do her justice by coloring her in and I wanted to do something a little different!
I love alcohol ink and all the techniques that can be done, but the color palette I own is on the bold side. I recently purchased Magicals from Lindy's Stamp Gang. Magicals are powdered watercolor dyes that you hydrate for a gorgeous burst of color and shimmer! If you've never seen Magicals in action-take a look here from the Lindy's site: https://www.lindysgang.com/products/summer-break-shimmer-magicals
My color palette came from the Summer Break set. I used Umbrella Drink Pink (I created 2 shades of this color by utilizing more water in one well=light pink; and less water/more powder in the other well=dark pink) and Teenie Weenie Bikini (yellow).
I enlarged the image and printed it on 4x5.5 Hammermill Premium Color Copy Cover in 100lb. The nice part of this technique is you don't use a lot of water, so my cardstock held up well. I began with the lighter shade of pink. I used a paintbrush to apply a few
lines and blobs of watercolor to my sheet of acetate. Then carefully turning it upside down I "smooshed" it onto my cardstock. After several moves, I used a hair-dryer to dry the paper so when I used the dark pink-it wouldn't spread. I then followed the same steps with the dark pink. When I was happy with the amount of pink on my card, I switched to the yellow powder. Taking a clean paintbrush I flicked the yellow powder onto the card. I sprayed water onto the yellow flecks and immediately smooshed them with the acetate. I did this until I was happy with the look of my card.
I then took a "script" stamp and using Picked Raspberry Distress Ink, I randomly stamped it on the card. To finish my background I took a clean paintbrush and dipped it in thinned out white acrylic paint and tapped the end of the brush to flick white droplets all over the card.
I loved the background of my card, but felt the focal image was getting lost! To bring the main image forward I took a white Gelly Roll pen and colored in all the flower petals.
I found edging the focal card with Smoke Distress Ink helped it to stand out and tearing the length of the right side added texture. I wrapped gold thread along the length of the left side and taped it behind the card.
The card was then layered on a piece of dark pink cardstock and again torn down the right side. I wanted to add more gold tones to my card and was happy when I found a piece of gold foiled design paper with flowers and made another layer with it. Additional dark pink cardstock was attached to my 5x6.5 card base and the focal image layers attached to that.
At first, I wasn't going to use a sentiment, but then decided thin word strips in black would look good. I found this sentiment-from Unity Stamps in my stash, I stamped & embossed it in white. Cutting the sentiment up into strips, I then aligned them between the gold threads and the focal image, following the line of the image's back.
Thanks for following along! I found "smooshing", to be very relaxing! I hope you will give it a try-let me know if you do! Now, get out there and go make something beautiful!
-Tia