Shades of Grey

      This weeks tag challenge from Albright of Diss is monochrome greyscale, monochrome is shades of one colour so it could be blues or greens, etc. this one has to be black, white and greys only.

      It took a while to decide what to make, then I remembered an old Woodware stamp of a flower that looks like it's been zentangled.
      I stamped in Versafine black on to a white tag, then covered that flower with Stix2 masking sheet. The amazing part about this is the last time I remember using the mask with this stamp was July of 2017, the mask was stored on the back of the laminated stamp packaging, it still worked! It took a little time to gently peel it off the packaging but it was perfectly alright to use, now that has to be value for money when it lasts that long, thank you Stix2.

      I stamped the second flower and covered that with another stored mask, then I stamped a few separate leaves to fill in some of the blank spaces.
      With all masks removed I had to decide the best way to colour this. It is recommended that you stamp in Memento when using alcohol markers, oops, I had used Versafine. I left the tag to dry thoroughly and then started with my markers, it didn't run, phew! I have a full set of Graph It pens so I chose the Natural Grey set numbers 0-7, there are numbers 8 & 9 but they're very dark and as this was stamped in black I thought it would be dark enough without them.
      My colouring is pretty basic, I am not very confident with these pens but I have tried to get some shading in there and as I'm bashing my stash then I at least have to try. The small background areas have been coloured with the palest grey so that any white areas on the flowers stand out more.
      I know it's meant to be shades of grey only but I had to sneak a tiny hint of silver in there to lift it a little, this I did with a Stix2 2in1 glue pen and some cold foil. The ribbons are both organza, one silver and the other coloured black with another alcohol pen. It actually looks better than I had hoped, imagine putting that on a red card blank for a striking greeting card.

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:

Crafty Gals Corner - Flowers

Lemon Shortbread - Anything Goes

International Art & Soul - No Focal Image

The Artistic Stamper - In The Garden