Crafty Rewind Series: Deliberate Imperfections - Reverse Chalkboard Technique

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This weekend, I tried something new - something I had neither eaten NOR cooked before and it was delicious - arepas! I'm very fortunate to have a Fiesta store on Instacart - they specialize in Hispanic foods, and I can often find my favorite ingredients only there. Since I needed masarepa, which is different from the normal masa harina I have, I hopped on Instacart and found that they had both the white and the yellow, which is what my friend Bev recommended - use half of each for the total of two cups. 

It's such a simple recipe - just warm water, the masarepa and salt for the dough. Then you make little rounds, pan fry them and finish them in the oven. The outside had this amazing, smooth and chewy texture - think English muffin, but with corn. The inside was supposed to get fluffy in the oven - mine did not, so I might have done something wrong, but oh my WORD were they delicious!! I split one, and topped with roast chicken salad, lettuce and my sister's salad dressing and it was to die for. 

So if any of you have the secret to fluffing them, let me know! I highly recommend trying them, and if you can't have wheat, these are a perfect sub for an English muffin! I read all about the regional differences in South America to the recipe for them, and I need to watch some good videos on them. It's definitely a recipe I would make the day you plan to eat them, because while I did reheat one and eat it the next day, it wasn't nearly as magical as fresh. 

Anyway. On to the cards. It's time for my crafty rewind! Today I'm using this bold and graphic cling stamp from the spring to do something I call the Reverse Chalkboard technique. I LOVE the original chalkboard technique - I think I wore it out back in the day - and when I stumbled upon this look, I was smitten with it too.

It makes me snicker thinking about it because while I was creating this in a MISTI - the whole problem that the MISTI was invented to solve is actually the technique haha! So back in the wooden stamp days we probably got this look a LOT and threw it away. So there's that!

Before I had this beautiful stamp inked completely, because of the smooth red rubber on the solid parts of the design, I could see a texture that looked sort of like newsprint - I was so excited, I stopped inking the stamp and stamped this "imperfect" image onto my cardstock! It looked to me like the opposite of the chalkboard technique, and it completely changes the look of this image - giving you twice as many possibilities - clean, bold and graphic patterns, or distressed, chalkboardy ones!

One tip I will share with you when using Bold Prints, is that I frequently cut a piece of cardstock that is the same size as the inside of my MISTI so that I can stamp the entire Bold Prints image. Then I cut it down into panels for two cards as I've done here today.

I double layered this big hello for the black card, and used red for the white card. Such a fun look. Embrace the imperfection! 

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What are you up to this week? Hard to believe it's almost the holidays. 

Loveyameanitbye.

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