Gilded butterflies
Posted: June 9, 2017 Filed under: butterfly charmer, Gilding Flakes | Tags: Nuvo gilding flakes, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps 4 Comments
I’ve been gilding again! This time for a guest post on the Foiled Fox blog. These lovely gilding flakes came from the Foiled Fox and I think they are so very pretty. I have shared two techniques for applying the flakes so far (here and here).
For today’s cards I used another technique and I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it worked. I used a glue pad to stamp the large butterfly charmer stamp on black cardstock. After stamping I let the glue sit and change colour before pressing the flakes onto it. I used both gold and silver flakes.
I had fun gilding the sentiments too. I cut both from adhesive backed foam and pressed the gilding flakes directly onto the adhesive side then smoothed them all over and into the nooks and crannies. I then stuck the gilded die cut sentiments onto my butterfly panels.
For more details on my process please visit the Foiled Fox blog. The supplies I used are linked below.
Supplies
Stamp: butterfly charmer (PB)
Dies: birthday, dream big (PB)
Adhesives: essential glue pad (Tsukineko), Stick it adhesive
Shiny things: Nuvo silver bullion gilding flakes, Nuvo radiant gold bullion gilding flakes
Cardstock: Neenah epic black cardstock
Also: adhesive backed foam
More butterflies
Posted: July 9, 2016 Filed under: butterfly charmer, Watercolour | Tags: Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer Watercolour pencils, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks, Tsukineko Versafine inks 17 Comments
I didn’t intend for this week to be all about butterflies but that’s the way it turned out. To create this panel I coloured the little butterflies on the butterfly charmer stamp using what I am calling the colour drop method. I don’t think it is anything new but I needed a name for this little technique. I stamped the large stamp with wild honey distress ink then painted the butterflies with water one at a time. The water blended the wild honey ink to give each butterfly a warm yellow tone but it also gave me a pool to drop another colour into. I took colour from my water colour pencils and dropped it onto the wet wings and let it spread into the whole wet area. I moved from wing to wing so they could dry a little before adding a second colour to an adjacent area. I did video the process and have sped it up and posted it on my instagram
When the wings were all dry I drew over the butterfly bodies, legs and antennae with either a dark brown watercolour pencil or a distress marker then blended the brown with a very small paintbrush and a wee bit of water. The finished panels remind me of botanical books.
The first one I did using this method is below. I added colour to the little butterflies also and filled in the background.
I used Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer watercolour pencils over rusty hinge distress ink for this one
You can see on the close up that you don’t lose all the definition of the stamped image when you paint over it; there are faint outlines of pattern underneath.
Thanks for dropping in; have a great weekend.
Supplies:
Stamps: Butterfly charmer, Happy Snippets (PB)
Dies: Wishes
Inks: wild honey distress ink, rusty hinge distress ink (Ranger) Versafine vintage sepia (Tsukineko)
Cardstock: Hot pressed Fabriano watercolour paper, brown cardstock, green cardstock
Also: Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils (Faber-Castell)
More vintage watercolour
Posted: May 5, 2016 Filed under: butterfly charmer, flourish & butterflies | Tags: Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer Watercolour pencils, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks 19 Comments
Thank you for your encouraging response to yesterday’s technique video. Please let me know if you give it a try. I have another card done in the same style today so if you missed the instructions yesterday, check out the tutorial here. The painting on this one was more straightforward as there was no masking. The butterflies are all on one large stamp, ‘Butterfly Charmer‘, and their botanical look makes them perfect for the vintage treatment.
As with yesterday’s card I stamped in vintage photo distress ink; this provides the sepia tone which I want to carry through the whole image as well as the water solubility necessary to blend the ink with the added colour from the watercolour pencils. I chose a blue, a purple and a pink pencil and switched from one to another as I coloured each butterfly.
The assembly was more time consuming with this card partly because it had fiddly little lace and charm elements. The main reason putting this card together took a while though was because I didn’t know what I wanted. I glued down some lilac ribbon and added a bow to the butterfly charm only to decide I didn’t like it. Thankfully the ribbon pulled off without ruining the watercolour panel. I did want the lace and the charm so I paired them with an embossed sentiment on a tag plus a little flourish die cut . The whole shebang is matted with the same pale brown as the tag and popped up on a natural coloured card base. I know for some of you this constitutes a fairly simple layout but for me this is high on the fussy-fiddly scale!
Supplies:
Stamps: Butterfly charmer, Happy Snippets (PB)
Dies: flourish & butterflies, a pocketful
Inks: Vintage Photo distress ink (Ranger) Versamark (Tsukineko)
Cardstock: Hot pressed Fabriano watercolour paper, brown cardstock
Also: Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils (Faber-Castell), lace, butterfly charm
Heather Telford 