Aubergine, Beach Cruiser and Mountain Lake

The six brand new (gorgeous!) Ranger Archival Colors came out on Monday, and I cannot stop playing with them in various combinations. My first card used all six shades and there's a full step-by-step tutorial on the Ranger Project Page. This card uses just the two blues (Beach Cruiser and Mountain Lake) with Aubergine and Graphite accents; though once again I've stenciled OVER a white-embossed stamped background, in exactly the same way as the tutorial card.

This time I white-embossed Simon Hurley's Handwritten Background Stamp* and used Simon's In Bloom layering stencil set to apply the Beach Cruiser, Mountain Lake and Aubergine Archivals on top; then I wiped off the excess inks with a rubbing alcohol wet wipe, to keep the background embossing nice and bright. On the second panel, I did the same white embossing, but just used a Mini Ink Blending tool to add the inks on top, without the secondary pattern from a stencil. Finally, I used the new shades to stamp some of the blooms (and a sentiment) from the Watercolor Flowers clear stamp set, which I cut out and added some coordinating Stickles** with the super-useful new Angled Brushes as a sparkly accent.

Of course, the very first thing I do with new inks is SWATCH them! Above you can see a little 3x3" ring-bound book I made to hold all of my Archival Inks, as well as the new pages I made for these six colors. I find swatches very handy indeed, because you can compare every color to every other shade and see how they relate to each other. If you embark on a swatching project of your own... this may sound weird and counter-intuitive... I highly recommend using more than one stamp or stencil and also, don't make your pages too perfect! Because if you add and/or subtract colors in future you don't want to pressurize yourself to spend ages finding the stamps you used last time or to make the pages exactly the same or perfectly aligned; these are SWATCHES, they're there to work for you! Save any perfectionist tendencies for your projects or better yet, let them go and just have FUN!

Here's one more shot of today's card, just because I took some extra pics, so of course I want to use them, lol. I hope your week has been fun and creative but if not, take heart... the weekend is nearly here!

*The Handwritten Background Stamp is out of stock as a single item, but can still be purchased as part of Simon's new Release Bundle; though if you missed it, any background stamp with small to medium text will work, as will any fairly dense background, for that matter!

**All of the new colors also have Reinkers and coordinating Stickles, which you can purchase separately or as bundles... check out the Ranger New Product Page to see all the different combos.