Vintage collage card

Posted: March 8, 2021 | Author: Heather | Filed under: Coliro paints, Darkroom Door, diamonds, Dies, Finetec paints, French Script, Gazette, gerberas, gift card pocket, global postmarks, Penny Black, shall we dance, Stencils | Tags: Coliro paints, Darkroom Door stamps, Darkroom Door stencils, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks | 4 Comments

A friend commissioned me to make a ‘vintage’ themed card recently and I happily pulled out a bunch of Darkroom Door stamps to do so. You can see the pocket watch stamp managed to feature three times but the French script, global postmarks, and gerberas also contributed. I stamped, blended and painted with two brown tones of distress ink, two blues and a black. (all the supplies are listed below)

To begin I smooshed some speckled egg and antique linen distress inks on a glass mat, added water swiped the panel through the diluted ink. After that the gerbera background stamp became part of the base layer in speckled egg distress ink. I layered the other stamps over the top in tea dye and antique linen inks and blended some speckled egg ink through the DD diamonds stencil. Of course there is splatter, watermarks and extra blending to darken the edges. To add a dimensional feature I die cut several stems of flowers with the Penny Black ‘shall we dance’ die, some are from watercolour paper, some from tan cardstock and a few from paper painted with salty ocean ink and stamped with the DD gazette stamp.

Almost finished, I added a strand of twine around the base and tied some tiny tags on with stamped PB sentiments on them and some little wooden stars I found. I was pretty happy with all this vintageness but decided to risk some gold paint. I splattered and added it to the tiny stars and heart, the flower centres. Where it worked best though was unevenly painted along the edges of the square panel. You probably can’t even see it clearly but it ended up being one of my favourite parts of the card.

By the way there are yummy new stamps on the Darkroom Door website. You will see them here soon, a few are winging their way here as you read this! Have a great day.

Supplies

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Gerberas

Posted: September 11, 2019 | Author: Heather | Filed under: Darkroom Door, gerberas, mesh | Tags: Darkroom Door stamps, Kuretake Zig clean color real brush markers, Ranger Distress inks | 3 Comments

This pretty bunch of gerberas is one of the newest stamps from Darkroom Door. I would have shown it to you sooner but it arrived from Australia two days after I left to go to Australia! The inspiration for this colour scheme once again came from a simple web search. A photo popped up with pink, red, apricot and orange gerberas massed together. So that’s what I did.

I stamped in black ink and embossed in clear powder on hot pressed watercolour paper then used zig clean color real brush markers for colouring. I started each flower by colouring around the centre with the marker then blended out the colour with a brush and water. I was able to add more with the markers as needed. To give the flowers even more pizaazz I gave them all a layer of clear wink of stella. (the red and pink ones then got a coat of micro glaze because I kept touching them and getting pink and red stains on things that were not meant to be pink or red!) I wanted to mount the flowers on a background but didn’t want it to fight with the focal panel. The DD mesh stamp worked beautifully and reminds me of the decorative mesh that is sometimes wrapped around cut flowers.

I stamped a sentiment from the large DD ‘thank you’ set and threaded some sparkly black thread through the tag and round the panel. A friend gave me a stash of metallic threads recently and they are coming in handy for a little subtle sparkle.

For the second card I went with a more country style look. All the gerberas feature the same fossilized amber, vintage photo and rusty hinge colour scheme with the two brown inks used also to create a background. I stamped the whole gerbera stamp in fossilized amber distress ink first then inked the centres in rusty hinge. I blended each petal with water and did the same with the centres then inked one side of the flower centres in vintage photo to add some dimension.

I tried a woodgrain background but it was too dark. By choosing to stamp the ‘thank you’ sentiment strip several times more of the cream background showed through. I inked the sentiment strip in vintage photo and rusty hinge distress inks and spritzed it lightly before each print. The result was blended and sometimes smudgy words. I gave both the flower panel and the background the splatter treatment then popped the gerberas up on a foam rectangle.