Tuskineko Ink PostCard challenge

I joined a challenge in the Surface Design Yahoo group that I am in. The post cards were mailed on April 30th, so they should have been received by everyone by now. It was a perfect challenge because I had just received and order of the Tuskineko Ink and I had been reading about using the ink with Aloe Vera gel to thicken it and enable you to keep the ink where you wanted rather than bleeding.

I love to work with Bleeding Heart, it seems to be my interest these last few months, so I used them as my theme for this postcard.

The first thing that I did was find a botanical print of the flower and the shape of the leaves. I practiced drawing the images until I had something I liked, and I drew some 4 X 6 squares on heavy watercolor paper. I drew a few until I thought it was what I wanted and then I cut out the shapes with an exacto knife. I've never really been able to draw so this process took me quite a while.

I thought that I could make the stencil sturdier by painting both sides with white gesso, but that didn't really work, so after it dried, I painted both sides with Mod Podge and that worked well.

In between drying times for the stencil, I painted some fabric with fabric paint, salted it and then let it dry. Put it in the dryer for awhile on high so it was ready to use the next day.

I started by painting the white ink first in the flowers. The white Tuskineko is opaque, so it gave me a good base for the pink flowers. After painting the white, I then thickened some red ink with aloe vera gel and painted over the white on the flowers. Then I took the stencil off and painted the white in the middle and added some shading to the pedals.

There was a darker patch of blue,on the bottom of the fabric, that I used to test out coverage and the colors reaction to the blue.

Next I went to work on the leaves. I laid out 8 postcards on the blue and I was glad I did. I only needed 4 postcards for the trade, but I wanted a few extras to send out. Good thing I did because the leaves were more difficult. In the lower left hand corner you can see the one I experimented with. I first put down white and then went over it with a dark green, to make it worse I forgot to use the aloe vera gel to thicken the ink so you can see how much difference the gel makes, no bleeding. The second leaf on the card I just used the thickened dark green, but i didn't like that either. I tried a yellow on the leaf in the bottom right, but that wasn't the right color, so I put the dark green over the yellow, and it was too dark. Then I mixed some dark green in the yellow and got the shade I wanted.

As you can see at the top of the page, the postcards look much better finished than they did as a sheet. After I finished painting them I cut them out, fused them to some Timtex and did an outline stitch around the flowers and the leaves. I also put some veins in the leaves, give it a much more finished appearance. Now back to finish April's TIF.