Good morning on this wintery Melbourne day! What better thing to do than stay inside out of the cold, with a hot drink in your hands and spend some time getting inspired and catching up with your stamping friends!

That's just what I plan to do! You may have arrived here at my blog after learning all about using bleach with your stamping, from my lovely friend Alisha Watson, or you may be just starting here. Either way, join me on this little tour through stamping land, just by following the link at the bottom of this message to the next person on the blog hop, and keep going until you hop right back here!  We love feedback and hearing what you think so please leave us a comment (blog love) too, if you have time - we love to get messages!

So, what technique did I choose today? I saw a technique at the Stampin' Up! Convention by lovely Sophie Zardeh, one of our SU! staffers. Sophie didn't give this technique a name, but now that I have recreated it, I am going to call it "Weathered Glaze" technique.

Start with your SU! Watercolour paper and stamp your chosen image in Black Stazon Ink. If it's an outline image, you may choose to do a bit of watercolouring now too.

Then using your SU! Simply Scored Tool, add some grid lines across the whole card. I did both directions, and on one card front I chose to also try them on the diagonal.

Next you're going to use your brayer to roll Versamark Clear Ink all over the whole piece of card, including the image. You will notice it doesn't go into the grooves you created with the Simply Scored.  Pour on your Clear Embossing Powder, make sure it covers the whole card, tip off the excess, then heat set.

The next step is to spritz the card front and back with water. Let it soak in a bit, scrunch the card, spritz it some more, really wriggle it about on the grooves you created previoulsy, to weaken the paper fibres. Scrunch it a bit more, tease up the edges and put it aside to dry.

Now, if it was me, just making samples for myself, I would stop right there and make some more, because that was SO much fun and I love how they look and feel!  But, my guess is, you want to see them on a finished project so you can see how to incorporate them into your art works! OKAY!!!!

So for the lovely bird image from Beautiful Blessings stamp set, I decided to create a really simple card. The card stock colours which match the watercolouring are Raspberry Ripple (yes! NEW!!) and Lucky Limeade.

For the clock image from Forever Young Stamp Set, I wanted to try a mini pizza box, but I have changed the dimensions somewhat so it's more like a book box. The colours I choose for this are one of my favourite combinations - Cherry Cobbler, Basic Black and River Rock!

I've added an antique brad to the side of the box which opens. It's only purpose is to indicate that's the side of the box to open - it doesn't actually hold the box closed - in the road construction industry we call that Way Finding Artwork - like the black bird or the hotel on EastLink! Or the Cheese Sticks at Flemington Road!

Very happy with how these projects turned out, and hope you are inspired to give this technique a go, as it really adds a special flavour to the projects!

If you'd like to continue on our little blog hop - there are only half a dozen ladies participating today - please leave a comment for me below, then hop off to see what the talented Ros Davidson has created for us today.

I will be back over the next few days with lots of sneak peaks of projects I have made using products from our TWO new catalogues that come out on September 1st! Hope to see you around!