For WOYWW my desk has been busy this week! I have been having great fun trying out a new technique I learnt about from the incredibly talented Morag over at Paper Rainbow. It involves Citra Solv cleaner and National Geographic magazines, and the process dissolves the ink leaving beautiful background papers. For anyone interested I found this tutorial here particularly helpful. The backgrounds on this weeks index cards for ICAD are all from my first attempt at this technique and they led me to work with darker colours and a night time feel - I ended up with a wonderful mix of highly patterned papers and more subtle ones like these - you never know what you are going to get! I introduced blue as I adore this peacock shade but very rarely use it - I thought the black really enhanced the vividness of it. I used some pieces of real wings from my old antique collection and I matched them with some brilliant blue embroidery thread and black lace.
Some close-up details
I love the darkness of this one with the delicate blue spots - so perfect for my theme!
I used some of the Victorian butterfly wing jewelry I've collected over the years to photograph with the index cards, including a brooch that fell apart when I picked it up - strangely I was thrilled, as I would never have pulled apart a perfectly good piece of jewelry but I love the old, broken look of it and I know I'll put it to good use in the future!
