An Arch and a Valentines Card

Well it's been a little busy at Harmony Road studio as of late.  Lesley's a busy gal with challenges, keeping house, and trying to keep sane and not stressed. To begin with hubs just got notified he is laid off as of Friday but hopefully it is just til spring picks up in hopes that he will be called back. With the economy the way it is seems this word Lay off is more often spoke of than finding a good job. When you reach a certain age you get looked at a lot differently too. Anyways we hope this is just temporary but the way things go nowadays you must be prepared for just about anything. So we pray and hope that either something else comes along or there will be more business in the spring and hubs will be called back.
Now onto a more pleasant subject, ART.
I have been busy working on my challenge greeting cards and I wanted to show you one in particular I made using my fused fibers. Love that stuff and so many uses for it. Here I have made a Valentine card from it, added some buttons and beads to the heart and then on the card I used a border punch to make a faux lacey edge. I have also cut  out some very easy 4 petal flowers and sewed around them with a random stitch like the heart and then place a button in the center as well. I applied a couple to cards and they are darn cute.

The next thing I want to show you is my February Inkurable Stampers Arch Challenge for 2010.

I haven't named this one yet, it hasn't jumped at me so if you can help me out I would greatly appreciate a title for it. It has to really speak to me and well it hasn't done so, but it will.

I had a piece of burgundy cardstock, I stamped it with this no name acrylic block heart filigree type stamp using Versamark watermark ink, then used clear EP and heated it.

Then, I used my waterpen and filled it with good ole bleach, make sure you have good ventilation when doing this. I spread the bleach over the whole paper and watched as the colour bleached out . I dried it with the heat gun then I proceeded to do the bleaching out again.

Now as you can see the results are stunning. The only part of colour remains is in the stamped area as the embossing resists the beach. I have also stamped using bleach and it is very beautiful as well.

This was better than I expected. The Arch Challenge this month required lace and that is one thing I did not have so I used some ribbon that looked a bit lacy on the edges and I used that on top and bottom with a plain strip of the non bleached out cardstock running through the ribbon and a piece of gauze.

Simple yet very effective I think.

Thanks for looking and when my camera returns to me I will take a photo of my bin of greeting cards.

Good night all.