/* */ Beulah Bee: Monarch

May 14, 2014

Monarch

This week's Monday blog challenge at Simon Says Stamp is the letter M. Hopefully, the title of my blog post illuminates the connection.

I decided I must use a stamp this week since that is the store's emphasis and my link-ups tend to drift away from that more often than not.

So out came the most expensive and most frustrating stamp I own.

It was an impulse buy, designed by Lynne Perrella for Paper Artsy, and the cost made great due to shipping from England to the USA. What I failed to take into account when I chose this stamp is the large expanse of dark area and detail too fine to show up well when stamping.

It's challenging to add color and I've been most successful by stamping onto tissue paper, tinting the backside then pasting it on. I learned on this go around that my archival ink pad needs re-inking since this is a large stamp and it was difficult to get good coverage. I've also tried using detail inks and special stamping paper but seldom get a look I'm happy with. I expect I'll keep trying to master this monarch and was glad for a challenge that prompted me to revisit this love/hate relationship.

The background paper is by Bazzill and it's called Antique Script. The butterflies were cut from an out-of-print Graphic 45 release called Botanicabella. Distress inks were used and torn bits of tissue tape from Idea-ology. Now, pretend there's a hole cut in the top because I forgot to do that when I made this tag (oops).