An oldie technique that’s been around for some time and one I’ve admired by various artists. I’d have to give most of this inspirational credit to the lovely Kelsey O’Mullane, who finally convinced me through her beautiful work to give it a go.
So armed with a flame, stamp and card, I followed instructions to the tee and somehow managed to set my card alight and the smoke alarm screaming in my ear. Round two I tried positioning the paper at different heights over the flame, I recall reading somewhere that there should be a bit of black smoke or was that ‘no black smoke’. Nevertheless all I was collecting at the moment was a pile of ashes and gave up. A job for another day - I’d had enough. In hindsight I realized maybe I should have used gloss card and not heavy weight cardstock.
My first few attempt cooked the card (pictured left), but I soon got the hang of it. Trial and error as they say. Definitely a matter of discovering how high to hold your card over the flame and the speed of moving it back and forth. And yes, gloss obviously does the trick. Two weeks later armed with gloss card, my flame and stamp, I was adamant that I was gonna get this right if I had to burn my fingers to do this.
Not bad for a day’s work – but still a long way to go before I perfect this. In the meantime I’ll continue to admire fellow artists and this technique.
Below are a few more attempts as I slowly got the hang of it. One downer of this technique is you're forced to give your stamp a good clean, which I admit I'm not generally inclined to do. A quick dab with Huggies usually does it for me, but this time a good old fashion scrub with soap required.
