I was looking to do something a little diffrent when I spied a roll of canvas and immediately thought of stamping and using my stains with it. Many of you will know that I love mixing vintage colours and techniques with more contemporary designs and that's what I've done here...
I chose a flower stamp from the Paper Artsy Hot Picks 1109 set (but there are plenty of other florals to choose from in the shop). The canvas is from a roll which you can get at most good art shops. I used black archival ink to stamp the image then let it dry before going further:
 |  |
To stain the canvas I used 6 Distress stains - Bundled sage (leaves), Tumbled glass and Weathered wood (petals and buds), Scattered straw and Spiced Marmalade (stamen) and Antique linen (background). To stain the flower I used a medium fine water colour brush and you have to dry the canvas after painting on each colour otherwise the colours run together (the canvas will happily take the heat from the Ranger heat gun which is not as ferocious as a general craft heat gun). When the flower was coloured and dry I dabbed the Antique linen all over the background:
 |  |
I trimmed the canvas then frayed it before inking the edges with Rusty hinge DI. So far:
Having prepared a base of kraft card, inked white card and coordinated blue striped backing paper, I layered them up and glued on the canvas with tape. I added some colour matched washii tape to the left and a floral faux postage stamp:
 |  |
Die cutting came next - flowers, a flourish, little bird cage, butterfly and a wooden plant pot label from the garden centre:
 |  |
Left:
Right:
All done:
You don't need canvas to use your stains as paints, ordinary cardstock is fine. If you haven;t tried this already why not get more use out of your stains and have a go?
Thanks for stopping by, more from our fab team in a few days!
Chris xxx
