By the light of the silvery moon...

The challenge at Sunday Postcard Art today is moonlight, and anything about Halloween is always a challenge for me.  It was late last night, the darkness all around and rain hitting the window pane when I was overcome by madness and my creation was born.....

Step away from the cleaning fluids now!

I didn't know if the idea would work but gave it a try.  I have a Paper Artsy stamp of a ruined monastery with a ghostly figure and I decided to try to stamp it with bleach on midnight blue card stock.  Yes, that's right - bleach!

I made the stamp pad from folded kitchen towel and applied bleach to the pad.  The first couple of attempts were a shambles with either the image being too soaked with bleach or not enough.  I realised it was impossible to get a clean image so I chose one that was under 'done' and used a paintbrush to finish up the monastery, and the moon.

The leaves around the sides and base are stamped in London Fog Gray and StayzOn black.  The moon was enhanced with some very translucent Golden Fluid medium in Zinc White.  The bats are actually swallows from a sea scene but I pressed extra hard on the stamp to make them fatter, voila bats!

There is no texture and I'm not sure this piece will survive very long since I didn't apply anything to prevent the action of the bleach continuing.  If you try this technique, it all depends on the type of paper what your results will be.  When I tried gray paper, the bleach removed the colour back to a pale gold.
Always wash your brushes and stamps quickly to avoid any damage.

New stamp from Lynne Perrella collection

I received my goodies from Paper Artsy yesterday, included was a Lynne Perrella plate of red rubber stamps.  I've not been buying this kind of quirky stamp very long so my collection is quite limited and over the last two days I've had trouble leaving them alone.

Yesterday I prepared a couple of background pages in my journal and then started stamping on various types of paper and trying to stamps with different techniques.  Today I chose the very bright background I created yesterday in Vermilion, Red, Lime Green and Lemon and stamped in Stays On Jet Black.  Unfortunately the photo just doesn't do justice to the colours, but you'll get the idea.

I'm also learning how to use Photoshop, which has always seemed a right pain in the bum to me.  Finally I learned how to straighten my image, so shouldn't be any more 'wonky' photo's :)
There are two other pages in progress, one using a masking technique and the other which will hopefully be a ghosting technique (if I can perfect it)