Brilliant

Posted: March 16, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: brilliant, Peerless watercolours, Penny Black, vintage touch | Tags: , , , | 18 Comments

It seems that Penny Black always includes a poppy or two in a spring release. This large stamp is called ‘brilliant’ and I think the mix of flowers, leaves and seed heads is just lovely. I chose to do no-line watercolour with soft stone ink and peerless paints.

I stamped the large image in Papertrey Ink ‘soft stone’ then worked with rose red, mountain green, golden yellow and warm sepia peerless paints. If you haven’t heard of Peerless Watercolour paints take a look at the video I made about them a few years back.

I wondered about adding background pattern or blended ink but left it clean except for the simple ‘vintage touch’ die-cut. The vintage touch set has two fancy banners as well as two dies that cut negative space banner patterns. I finished off the centre of the poppy with a black marker.

I am still undecided about the lack of background and sentiment; what do you think?

Supplies

Work & Relax

Posted: July 30, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: paws and relax, Peerless watercolours, zooming by | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Are you surprised to see another critter post? Regular programming will resume I promise but first let’s enjoy Scooter and her friends working from home and pampering themselves!

Once again I stamped the images with Papertrey ink’s soft stone. It is great for no-line watercolour. I used Peerless watercolours to paint the little scenes concentrating on a few main colours for each card. For the hedgehog I switched to brown distress markers, easier for getting all those spikes!

If you didn’t read it in my earlier post, Penny Black is donating some of the proceeds from the Scooter release to Muttville a rescue program for senior dogs.

Hope you get to ‘paws & relax’ this weekend. It’s a long weekend here in Ontario!

Supplies

(Compensated affiliate links used when possible)

Hot Diggity

Posted: July 29, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: doggone great, hot diggity dog, Peerless watercolours, Penny Black | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

I have another cute Scooter card for you today. Once again I watercoloured, this time with distress inks. I think this is my favourite set from the release; what’s not to like about a canine mariachi band?

I stamped some images with soft stone ink then painted with distress inks. Other images, including the hedgehog I stamped in brown distress inks and blended them to fill the image. I painted the background with distress inks smooshed and diluted on my glass mat.

The second card I stamped in antique linen distress inks and stamped on masking paper also so I could create the scene with cacti in the background and one musician behind another.

I painted with peerless watercolour paints and added gold details with a gel pen. I used the masks a second time so I could blend ink over the background.

These Scooter scenes were definitely a departure from my nature (and book) themed projects but as a friend said to my yesterday, ‘always good to step out of your comfort zone!’

Supplies

(Compensated affiliate links used when possible)

Lemon Lush

Posted: March 15, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: floral notes, Karin brushmarkers, lemon lush, Peerless watercolours, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments

It’s a collaboration day with The Foiled Fox, so I am over on their blog and sharing here at home too. Make sure you pop over there to learn more about today’s card process and products.

Isn’t this a bright happy image? I know it’s partly the colours I chose but I think it is also the mix of lemons, leaves and flowers. It’s a glimpse of summer and that is definitely welcome! The stamp is called ‘lemon lush’ and it is a large 6″x6″ from Pinkfresh Studio. I’ve used two thirds of it for this rectangle card but I’ll be showing you the whole square image on another card soon.

I stamped the rubber stamp on hot pressed watercolour paper in raven black ink and embossed in raven powder (both from Brutus Monroe). For the watercolouring I used Peerless watercolours. I watercolour with quite a few different products so sometimes the Peerless paints sit on the shelf feeling forgotten. Once I bring them out however, I remember just how beautifully they blend and what gorgeous colours are available. If you haven’t heard of Peerless watercolours paints they are an old, old company and the paint is in pieces of thick paper. I use a wet brush to pick up paint to use on my project.

When painting the cut lemons I used a yellow and a light orange paint, for the whole lemons I used the same plus darker orange tones to get depth and shadow. I used two greens for the leaves, a blue for the tiny flowers and violet for the large flowers. To fill in the berries I switched to a purple Karin brushmarker. The sentiment is from Pinkfresh Studio’s ‘floral notes’ set stamped in monarch versafine clair. I stamped the flap of my envelope too with memento dandelion ink. If you take a close look at the second photo you will see some clear dots glued to the lemon halves, those droplets of juice might just be my favourite part of the card! Thanks for joining me today and thank you Foiled Fox for sending me this stunning stamp to create with.

Supplies

(Compensated affiliate links used when possible)

Meadow blossoms

Posted: April 27, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Concord & 9th, Inktense pencils, meadow blossoms, Peerless watercolours, Penny Black | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments

I attended a class not too long ago taught by my clever friend, Liane, where we used paint chips to make cards. Some paint chips have colours from the same family displayed but others have colour combinations that are suggestions when painting and decorating a room. I used one such card to choose the colours for this blue floral card. The paint chip featured colours called nautica, blizzard and tahini. I found similar colours on my peerless watercolour palette and did some no-line watercolour.

I started by stamping C&9 ‘meadow blossoms’ floral stamp in Gina K ‘whisper’ ink. The ink is a pale beige/grey dye ink which disappeared nicely as I painted with peerless watercolour paint over the top. I worked on non adjacent petals so the paint and water would not bleed from one area to the next. On the largest flowers I painted a dab of ‘Alice blue’ paint then blended it with water to fill the petal.

On the smaller flowers I switched the order and painted each petal with water first then dabbed in some blue paint. The second method resulted in slightly paler flowers. I painted all the leaves and stems in ‘warm sepia’ and the flower centres in ‘pearl grey’. Once all the paint was dry I used two inktense pencils to add veins and shading to the leaves and petals. I painted black dots in the flower centres then drew tiny stems to the dots with a very fine tip black pen. The black thank you die cut is from the PB ‘many thanks’ die set cut from black cardstock and stacked for extra dimension. I think it works well either side of the cute phrase from the PB ‘million thanks’ set which is stamped in nocturne black on a strip cut with the Taylored Expressions ‘simple strips’ die.

If you are stuck for a colour combo try some paint chip inspiration; I don’t think I would have thought up the blue, brown, grey combo without the inspiration on the chip. And call your bestie!

Supplies

Meadow blossoms gone tropical

Posted: April 15, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Inktense pencils, meadow blossoms, Peerless watercolours | Tags: , , , | 9 Comments

I am over on the Foiled Fox blog today sharing these pretty flowers from Concord & 9th and some no-line watercolour. Make sure you head over there for more details, then take a little stroll through the inspiration on their blog.

It wasn’t my intention to create a tropical looking card but that is absolutely what happened wouldn’t you agree? I chose three colours, geranium pink and alizarine pink from my set of Peerless watercolours and sea blue from my Inktense pencil set. All three colours ended up being bolder than I expected. I stamped flowers from the C&9th ‘meadow blossoms’ set in Gina K’s amalgam ink, ‘barely there’ which is a pale buttery colour, great for no-line watercolour.

There are various methods for no-line watercolour; here I  painted water on each petal first then dropped in a little geranium pink at one end of the petal and alizarine pink at the other then blended the two. The leaves I did by colouring one end of each leaf with the inktense pencil before blending blue into the whole leaf. I also used an inktense yellow, to fill the flower centres and a pink to add veins to the petals after painting. I added little black dots to the flowers with a fine tip pen

I embossed the sentiment from the same C&9 set and did some die cutting with nesting circles to add a little interest with a co-ordinating blue cardstock. I hope you enjoyed this little taste of the tropics; as I write this post it is snowing outside. Yep, a little April snow, just to keep us guessing.

As always I love connecting with you in the comments below or over on the Foiled Fox blog.

Supplies

Tenderness roses

Posted: February 7, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Peerless watercolours, Penny Black, tenderness, tenderness matching dies | 10 Comments

I am on the Foiled Fox blog today, one of my favourite artsy craftsy places to be. If you want to read how I created today’s cards then pop over there right now! If you want to read some of my musings and wonderings about stamps, dies and paints keep reading here and then click over there.

These roses are from a sweet little Penny Black set called ‘tenderness’ and it has co-ordinating dies. I have come a little late to the co-ordinating die game but you know I don’t like to fussy cut so it’s no surprise that I opted for the die cutting route.  Another reason I haven’t used many co-ordinating dies is because I often stamp and paint directly on my panels with very few layers involved.

One of the questions with co-ordinating dies is how to deal with the white outline if you have a coloured background. I think I’m used to seeing it now so it doesn’t bug me as it once did. On the roses above I did paint outside the lines on a few of them so there is a mix of coloured edges and white edges. I don’t think it is too distracting either way.

Another thing you can do with co-ordinating dies is cut masks for layered stamping. The masks will be a bit bigger than the stamped image but it is easy to trim a little off or just position the masks to line up with the edge of the stamp that needs to be masked.

I did all the painting for these cards with peerless watercolours. Sometimes I forget about my peerless paints because they are an unassuming collection. If you haven’t heard of them before check out an earlier blog post I wrote about them. The colours blend beautifully, the range of colours is excellent and the price is pretty nice too.

I chose friendship sentiments again, one from PB ‘love language’ and one from ‘bear cuddle’. All the supplies are listed below and here’s the link to my process on the Foiled Fox blog.

Supplies

Blushing blooms

Posted: September 16, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: blushing, blushing cut out, Peerless watercolours, Penny Black | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

I have coloured this lovely flower a few times lately but I realised I hadn’t posted it all on my blog. I did some no-line colouring with the stamp which took a while due to the number of petals, but still produced a nice result which I’ll share at the end of this post. This weekend I decided to emboss the flower instead and paint it with peerless watercolours. I must say this technique was faster and less fiddly than the no-line petal by petal approach. I embossed two of them and painted them side by side with the same three paint colours. Peerless paint blends beautifully on the paper, in this case hot pressed watercolour paper, and I was able to add royal crimson over the top of flesh tint and vice versa until I was happy with the coverage and blending. The leaves were painted in olive green. I think I’ve mentioned before how much I love the quality, depth and blending of peerless watercolours.

I used the co-ordinating die to cut out both flowers then arranged them on top of a ‘snowfall/speckles’ embossing folder background. I snipped a few of the leaves off and rearranged them to balance the composition. I also glued some pieces directly to the background and popped other pieces up on dimensional foam. The sentiment is from the grateful sentiments set and is embossed and popped up also. Because my orange/pinkish combo is opposite green on the colour wheel this card is a match for the current CAS watercolour challenge, a challenge I love but rarely get my act together to enter!

Here is a similar design I completed as part of my no-line watercolour class. I stamped in antique linen distress ink and used a selection of distress inks as ‘paint’. The sentiment is from a clever Taylored Expressions stamp and die combo.

Supplies

You & Me

Posted: June 12, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: City stacks, Concord & 9th, Peerless watercolours, simple serif alphabet | Tags: , | 4 Comments

This wonderful new C&9 alphabet stamp set arrived a few days ago and, oh the possibilities! I had only a little time to play with it today so I pulled out the delightful ‘city stacks’ stamps, also from Concord & 9th. I stamped in versafine onyx black ink and watercoloured with my peerless watercolour paints. Versafine is a pigment ink so it won’t react with water when I start painting over it.

The sky and the road I blended onto the panel with makeup brushes which was quite a bit quicker than painting it. I used broken china, scattered straw and wild honey distress inks for a sunrise look.

When I laid out the letters in my stamp positioner I wondered how long it would take me to get them lined up. I got them right on the second attempt! I slipped in a piece of acetate to do a trial stamping, realigned the few that needed it and then the next attempt was just right. The serifs at the top and bottom of the letters make it easy to line them up on the grid of my stamp positioner lid. Yay! I used part of a stamp from the ‘city stacks’ set to finish the sentiment at the bottom of the panel.

You’ll be seeing these letters again, and again. Count on it. And there are dies too, I didn’t use them on this card but it won’t be long.

Supplies

Stamping is for the birds part 2

Posted: October 31, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: A Bright Tomorrow, gift card pocket, Peerless watercolours, winter lookout | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

The second installment of my ‘stamping is for the birds‘ series features the Penny Black stamp ‘Winter lookout’ with a little bird on the outside looking in. I have seen a few other beautiful cards using this stamp and wish I had added a little foliage but there is always next time. Take a look at this gorgeous card by Susie Lessard.

I stamped in versafine clair nocturne ink and embossed in clear powder then painted the bird and all the wood with my peerless watercolours. To create variation in the wood I painted with several browns and some warm mustard yellow as well. Once I had finished the woodwork I had to decide how I would do the window. I chose frosty patterns like we often get on our windows in winter so I used the delicate snowflake stamp from the PB set, ‘A bright tomorrow’ to emboss in clear powder. When I painted pale blue into the window area it resisted the snowflake shapes.

I tried a second colour scheme embossed in versafine smokey grey, featuring greys and blues and stamped some pine branches inside the windows as if garlands were hanging there.

I finished both cards with co-ordinating mats and sentiments stamped on little tags from the ‘gift card pocket’ die set. I think I have only once made a gift card pocket but I often use the little tags and banner dies from the set. I added some finer details to both cards with black and brown markers once the painting was all finished as sometimes embossing does not preserve all the definition.

Supplies

Stamps: winter lookout, a bright tomorrow, festive snippets, joy of peace (PB)

Die: gift card pocket (PB)

Ink: versamark, nocturne versafine clair, morning mist versafine clair, northern pine memento

Paper: hot pressed watercolour, neenah cream, neenah black, kraft, red, olive green

Paint: peerless watercolours

Also: clear embossing powder, brown marker, black marker, twine

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