Warm Wishes

Posted: February 2, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Darkroom Door, Nature Walk, warm wishes, Wildflowers Vol 1 | Tags: , , | 5 Comments

Hot off the presses and ironically cold out of my mail box here are some brand new stamps from Darkroom Door. Rachel Greig creates incredibly artistic stamps and these new flowers are no exception. The feature image and sentiment on today’s card are from the new set, ‘Warm Wishes’ which contains five flower stamps and eight sentiments.

I decided not to watercolour them this time (but you know I will), instead I chose a crisp pigment ink so you would see the incredible detail of the flower head. I created a background by stamping some fave florals from DD ‘nature walk’ and ‘wildflowers vol 1’ in memento London fog ink. It is a light enough grey to show up but not take over. On the card above I stamped the feature flower from ‘warm wishes’ in versafine clair ‘shady lane’ ink and added the sentiment in the same colour.

Both the stamped panel and the card base are neenah solar white cardstock and the panel is popped up on a piece of foam to create some subtle framing.

Make sure you pop over to the Darkroom Door blog for more inspiration with the new ‘warm wishes’ set. And check back here too because I’ll be giving these stamps the watercolour treatment very soon!

Supplies

 

Stencils & watercolour

Posted: January 20, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: boxes, carved flowers, carved flowers, Darkroom Door, ferns, Stencils, Wildflowers Vol 1 | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

Some recent art from Kathy Racoosin inspired me to use my stencils a little differently. I used four stencils from Darkroom Door and my ever useful distress inks.

All these cards are one layer; I often attach a one layer panel to a card base and keep the layers minimal that way but this time I cut card bases from cold pressed watercolour paper and did all the stenciling and painting on directly on the card base. I taped the stencil to the card base using the grid on my glass mat to make sure the stencil sides and card sides were parallel. I used a large blending brush to transfer antique linen to the watercolour paper. Whatever ink you use through your stencil will lend some colour to the final images as it will mix with the ink painted on later.

On the twelve square background I painted peeled paint and pine needles ink using the blended antique linen as my guide. On the card below I used wilted violet, abandoned coral and blueprint sketch inks to fill the six blended squares.

After both cards had dried I used a stamp positioner to stamp the flowers in versafine clair nocturne ink. There is texture in the cold pressed watercolour bases so I stamped and restamped a few times. After stamping a couple of sentiments also from Darkroom Door I embossed all the stamping with clear powder. (I’ve listed and linked all the stamp sets and stencils at the end of this post.) I used one or two of the same distress inks  to stamp matching envelopes.

For the next two cards I used the same ‘blend then paint’ method. Once again I blended antique linen ink through the stencil then for the ferns painted a section at a time switching between cracked pistachio, peeled paint and pine needles inks.

I smooshed the ink pads on my glass mat and added a little gold shimmer with a few drops of Ken Oliver’s ‘yellow gold’ liquid metals. The shimmer isn’t very obvious in the photos but in real life it adds a little pizazz!

On the cone flowers I also added shimmer and used peeled paint for the stem, and fossilized amber with abandoned coral for the flower and petals.

Techniques like this make me take a second look at my stencils. I want to try it with a different base colour next time. Take a look at Kathy’s video to see her step by step technique.

Supplies

 

 

Wings & things

Posted: March 23, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Wildflowers Vol 1, Wings | Tags: , , | 11 Comments

This is one of those cards that just evolved. I’ve had the butterfly stamps at hand while teaching a class with them. I did not have a definite plan; in fact, you may be surprised to hear it started with three butterflies stamped in rusty hinge distress ink. The panel sat around for a while then I decided to paint turquoise brusho and metallic sky liquid metal inside each of the brown butterfly outlines. I didn’t love that so I spritzed interference blue pearl-ex spray over all three butterflies to make the colour bleed into the surrounding area. Still not right, so I employed a technique one of my friends calls ‘drowning’ and spritzed the panel thoroughly. The result was a sparkly blue panel with muted butterflies now looking like background images.

I used pine needles and mermaid lagoon distress inks to stamp foreground images, more butterflies and some flowers. I framed the panel by sponging pine needles ink around the edges then splattered a little white gesso over it. As often happens with my cards I started thinking about a sentiment once there was no room left for one. Vellum to the rescue with an phrase embossed in silver.

Supplies

Stamps: wildflowers vol 1, wings

Inks: rusty hinge, mermaid lagoon distress ink, pine needles, versamark

Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, vellum, neenah solar white cardstock

Paint: turquoise brusho, white gesso, metallic sky liquid metal

Also: silver embossing powder, interference blue pearl-ex powder mixed with water in a mister