Versamark resist - complete with mistakes!

It's ages and ages since I used the Versamark resist technique - so long, in fact, that as you will see, I messed it up the first time.

If you're not familiar with the technique, you stamp your image onto glossy card using Versamark ink, and then brayer a dye based ink over it, and the image pops out from the background. And the more you brayer, the clearer the image gets.

Now I wanted to do this but I also wanted to use an ordinary smooth white card, so I knew that my image wouldn't show up very clearly. Also as I was using several inkpads, I wanted to use a sponge rather than a brayer.

I masked off a strip on my card and off I went. The sponge didn't seem to be working so I switched to cottonwool balls, which made the ink colours brighter - but still no image, or only the tiniest trace of one. Then I realised I was using pigment ink. Sigh.

So, rather than waste the card blank, I dried off the ink with my heat gun then stamped and embossed these bold butterflies (an old Hero Arts stamp, and my granddaughter's absolute favourite stamp)  over the card once the mask had been removed.  If you look very closely, you will see faint traces of the gerbera stamp that I used on the masked strip.

 

So, back to the drawing board.  This time I remembered to use a dye based ink, and despite not being on glossy card, the gerberas are much more clearly visible. After removing the mask I stamped and embossed the gerberas in black and coloured them in with marker pens. And I learned something new - masking tape leaves an invisible residue that slightly resists marker pens. Who'd a thunk it? It might have been OK if I was using Promarkers, but I chose water based ones as I was making one layer cards and didn't want the colour to show through on the back.

And come to think of it, those flowers look more like daisies than gerberas, but I'm pretty sure the stamp was called "Gerbera" when I bought it!

So, there have been lots of slip ups along the way, and I've learned from my mistakes and hopefully some of YOU will have learned from them too. So in the interest of public service, despite both cards having major faults, I'm playing along with:

Casology - Wings (card 1)
Addicted to stamps and more - Photo Inspiration (card 2)

One layer Simplicity - Strip down (both cards)
Less is More - Berry colours (card2)