Inspired By Linda Cain

This week Paper Artsy showcases work by Linda Cain and I took my inspiration very closely from this project. This time I only had to contend with one or 2 problems, so things are looking up !

Like Linda I used distress inks for the background but because I started on a gessoed chipboard panel (it was grey so I had to paint it white) I encountered my first problem. If you've never tried this before know that distress inks do not dry on gesso... even after using the heatgun on it, the inks still moved ! Which is why the colours are not very strong as past a certain point instead of adding colour the cut & dry just moves it around.
Before stamping I sprayed the panel with fixative to avoid smudging.

I used stamps from Hot Picks 1205 (the flower), 1203 (the leaves and sentiment), 1204 (the butterfly), coloured the images with pencils and then used  a white gel pen as per Linda's technique. I had never done anything like this before and I was determined to try but...my pen was not very cooperative. Although fairly new (less than a year old) the ink, when it starts flowing, leaves "dry" residue along with the normal gel. So I didn't go too far with this lest I made it worse !

Let me know what you think,