Bat Square Panel
This piece began with a piece of scrap black card I’d pressed into a puddle of distress oxide ink. As the card square dried I began to realise that the ‘oxidising’ effect of the inks had created a perfect night sky background.
The first thing I did, after making the base background, was heat emboss a stamp of bats in flight across the upper right of the square. I used Distress Oxide in Crackling Campfire as the ink for heat embossing as, although it dries much faster than proper embossing ink so requires speedy working, it provided a solid colour behind the translucent effect embossing power I was using.
After that I marked out the moon using a stencil cut from ordinary paper with a circle die. I used more distress oxide ink, this time in Fossilised Amber, to colour the moon. Because distress oxides are fusion of dye and pigment ink they still show clearly on black card, but when applied lightly remain somewhat translucent in effect.
This was an important effect to achieve on the moon as whilst I wanted it to be clearly visible I equally didn’t want it to overtake the swarm of bats which was intended to be the focal point.
The brown border was embossed with a wood grain embossing folder and is actually made from three long strips of scrap card. I didn’t mind that it wasn’t a single piece as I thought the joins would make it look like wooden planks.
To create the 3D-effect bats, I ink blended white card with a combination of brown and grey tones, then cut the bats out of it. I often prefer to ink blend my card rather than use coloured card as I like the tonal variation it gives.
I used two different sets of bat dies to create the swarm as I wanted to have a mixture of ‘poses’ for their wings rather than have them all look the same. The bats are glued onto the card only under their body, and I gently bent their wings into a curve by pressing the paper around a pen.
Finally, I added a shiny gold line around the edge of the moon, as well as white dots emanating from it and cross shaped stars in the sky using gel pens.
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Bat dies: ‘Bat Crazy’ (several years old) and ‘Moonlight’ (current) by Sizzix
Bat stamp: Bat Colony by Lavinia Stamps
Distress oxides in various colours
Wood grain embossing folder: Magazine freebie from several years ago
Gold gel pen: Uniball Signo
White gel pen: Sakura Gelly Roll in 0.5
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