2020 #5 Mark Making: Dream with ELB {by Chris Dark}

2020 Topic 5: Mark Making

Sometimes the simplest techniques are the best, and Chris has gone old school..literally, using an item we often associate with school; the wax crayon. She has made beautiful marks in so many different ways - it's like a mark making reference book!
~ Keren 

Hi everyone, it's Chris here with you today sharing a card for the mark making topic but what is mark making? I think I've always thought of it as any kind of marks put down on a surface to make art which of course includes stamping. There are so many ways to make them too using a myriad of tools, mediums, patterns or textures. Mark making is the descriptive term for all of these and you only have to look at prehistoric cave paintings to see our long history of enjoying it.

I've built my card front with layers of mark making using brayering, paint splattering, infusions sprinklings, babywipe wiping and wax crayon resist ​incorporating stamping with ELB30 by Lin Brown which has some beautiful accent stamps.

I've also incorporated some of the gorgeous new green Fresco Finish Chalk acrylics in Willow, Spring, Beanstalk and Gumboots which work so well together. For a bit of contrast I also added in some hints of Mustard Pickle,  Bubble Gum and Sherbet.

The wax crayon created a resist, I doodled lines and dots around the edges of my piece of Smoothy (heavyweight) cardstock.

The next layer is a mix of all the green paints with Olive Tree and Rusty Car Infusions on top which I also brayered into the still damp paint. I allowed the paint to dry a bit more before rubbing back a bit at the edges to reveal the white marks from the wax crayon.

A layer of stamping in paint with the beautiful text stamp from the set.

Another layer of paint stamping. 

Some of the accent stamps with the darkest paint which give a glass-like effect due to the transparency.

More layers.

At this point I prepped another piece of card to stamp the leaves to cut them out. 

The leaves are glued over the stamping underneath. I added more accent stamping in pinks, splatters of paint and more mark making using paint pens.

Sentiments are cut out and added with extra marking around them.

The skeleton leaves are beautiful and although associated with autumn, stamped in pink they remind me of my Acer which has pink edged leaves in spring. 

I love splatters and the random effect of them.

I hope you'll join us in this topic, I spent a very enjoyable time creating my layers and love the depth I got from the different kinds of marks, stamping and the different tools I used to make them.  

Thanks for joining me today, I hope you have some creative time yourself.

Chris x

Blog: www.sketchingstamper.blogspot.co.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christine.dark.7
Instgram: @chrisd999
Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/cdark4163/