April showers

I'm ready to admit that the Craft Barn April prompts (blue and umbrellas) took me by surprise! Not that I didn't know what I wanted to do with them though. I don't have many umbrella options in my stash, and this gave me the chance to use one of my favourite stamps. Besides the Craft Barn calendar challenge I am posting for the Rubberdance colour challenge (blue, purple, pink + texture).

The sentiment and the "Rain under umbrella girl" stamp are from VivaLasVegaStamps. I guess the Banksy images have been designed to be used with plain black ink as in the original graffitis, but I've mainly used watercolour stamping, and the results are a positive surprise every time! I spread Distress inks on the stamp (I have mostly mini pads, so colouring small areas is ok), spritzed with water, stamped on nice thick paper (Canson Imagine) and dried with a heat gun. The puddles have been made with a water droplet background stamp. I bought it from De Stempelwinkel this winter, and I'm not very satisfied with the detail in it, I have seen better ones. Anyhow, since I spritzed it with water, detail had no importance this time. I fussy cut around the droplets to make puddles and added Glossy Accents for some texture.

This will be a flip calendar, so the grid for the April calendar will be behind the May page and I can't do it before I've chosen the cardstock for the May page (=after I know the May prompts). Behind this sheet is the March calendar grid, and I am one bit wiser after having to build yellow flowers to embellish it: I have saved some of my puddle fragments and hope to find them when I draw the April calendar grid.

Update: found the pieces, and here's the finished page:

The other pages for this scrapbook -style calendar are linked here.

January 

February

March