The card that went wrong

It's ages since I shared one of my "cards that went wrong" because usually I find a way to rescue or recycle the failed attempt, but this one was beyond redemption, so I'm sharing it as well as the replacement card which, although it didn't go exactly according to plan, worked much better.

I'd seen a beautiful CAS card on Pinterest that had been made by watercolouring through an aperture, leaving it to dry and then overstamping in black. I decided to try to recreate the effect, using a circular aperture.

As I don't have any watercolour paints, I scribbled water based markers onto scrap acetate and then picked up the ink with a water brush and painted bands of colour through an oval mask onto my card.

However when I removed the mask, some of the ink had oozed under the edge of the card, making the edges messy. I thought that maybe I could rescue it by using the watercolour brush again to tease out the ink at the edges, removing the definition of the oval and making it just fade away. But by now the card was over-wet and started to pill and crumble on the surface.

Nevertheless I left it to dry and overstamped it, but the pilled and rather buckled surface wasn't good for stamping on and the image came out faint and patchy.

Here is the finished card, which actually looks much better in the photo than it does in real life.

Seeing that the idea had potential, I went back to the drawing board and this  time created the background shape by scribbling the markers onto an acrylic block and spritzing it with water before using it like a stamp. This was MUCH more successful, although it gave me much bolder, brighter bands of colour than I had been setting out to achieve. I like the way the spritzing has created interesting blending patterns between some of the bands of colour.

Because the card wasn't over-wet this time, the surface stayed undamaged and accepted the stamping much better.

So there you are - I may not have rescued my original card, but I DID rescue the idea, even though it wasn't what I'd originally intended to do.

I'm sharing my new, improved card with:

Addicted to Stamps and More - Clean and Simple
One Layer Simplicity - a Multitude of Gratitude
Mod Squad Challenge - Give Thanks  
Just Us Girls - One layer card