Sometimes the most important part of your art is how you display it. Those finishing touches can make such a big difference. Today was one of those times.

My friend, Chris, and I were working on a project from Texture Effects by Nancy Curry. (Above is her card.) Neither one of use were very happy with our interpretations of the project. Chris declared that her piece looked like “throw up”. She has such a way with words. I was content to simply say that I didn’t like mine and thought it was “too much”. So we kept working…

Chris’ card got new life by adding a background piece with a few embellishments. She still isn’t a huge fan of it but I think it looks nice.

For my piece (above) I ended up cutting it down and on a different orientation than the original had been. Originally those bands had all been traveling upwards to the right. Remember my “too much” comment? Well, the fix included adding even more to it. I added the tiny gold beads and the thin gold cord. It was getting better but I still didn’t like it very much. A couple of background layers and a few beads did the trick for me.

So, how did we do these? The basic steps are pretty easy. You stamp some detailed images onto the card stock to give it a sense of texture. It helps to use a mix of metallic and normal inks on this step. Then you start laying down bands of color using paints and glazes. While these colors are still wet you stamp into them to add even more texture to the card. Finally, you glue on fibers and beads.

We were in agreement that this technique requires a bit of practice. You need to find just the right colors, get the bands to show just the right amount of fluid motion and have a good feel for where to put the fibers. It was a little out of our comfort zone and we weren’t making the best choices with our earliest cards. Neither one of us uses a lot of fiber in our work so that was a hard step to get comfortable with. I’m glad that we gave this a try. It is a good thing to force yourself out of the comfort zone once in a while. That’s how you learn new things and get fresh ideas to use with the old things.