When a plan goes awry

Posted: October 17, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Christmas berries, dancing daisies, gift card pocket, winter branches | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

Today’s card was the result of a thought I had after making a Christmas themed card featuring the berries seen on this one. The Penny Black berry stamp is called ‘Christmas berries’ so it is hardly surprising that I made a Christmas card with them but I wanted to see if I could put them to use in a non-Christmas card too.

I started by stamping the dancing daisies in blue, purple, green and yellow (they were all distress inks and I will make a guess at them in the list below but once again I didn’t write them down). After stamping I blended the petals  and leaves with water and a paint brush. I masked the daisies as I had saved masks from a previous project, stamped the berries in pinky, purply colours so they wouldn’t look Christmassy and blended again with water.

Finally I added some ‘winter branches’ in brown ink. This is where my plan started to unravel. I didn’t want to mask all those berries and flowers to put the winter branches in the background so I stamped them over the top and blended them with a paintbrush also. With the blending they became more prominent than I wanted; without the blending they looked badly stamped because I was working on textured cold pressed watercolour paper.

I finished off the panel with some dark brown splatter then moved onto another project undecided whether to turn this one into a card or not. When I came back to this panel later I decided to break up the dominance of the brown winter branches with a sentiment panel. I used a die from the gift card pocket set to cut a decorative shape from hot pressed watercolour paper and adhesive backed foam then stamped a sentiment from the banner sentiments set. I ended up liking the idea and the colours of this card but it’s not my best layout.

Supplies

Stamps: dancing daisies, Christmas berries, winter branches, banner sentiments (all PB)

Inks: blueprint sketch, dusty concord, fossilized amber, forest moss, festive berries, gathered twigs distress inks & monarch versafine clair

Paper: cold pressed watercolour paper, hot pressed watercolour paper

Die: gift card pocket (PB)

Tools: adhesive backed foam, Misti

Christmas berries

Posted: September 14, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Christmas berries | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

I’m hanging out on the Foiled Fox blog today, one of my favourite places to be. They have a bunch of lovely new stamps & dies from Penny Black; if you haven’t had a chance to browse their new arrivals, you really should. Christmas berries is one of the new rubber cling stamps and I have filled out my panel with extra branches from a handy set called ‘winter branches‘.

I used a stamp positioner so I could work on berries separately from leaves and twigs. I stamped the berries in ‘festive berries’ ink (imagine that) and blended on the paper with a paint brush. I let the ink dry before painting some ‘aged mahogany’ onto the shadowed areas of the berries.

I inked the leaves with pine needles distress ink at one end and peeled paint at the other. After stamping I blended the two colours together with a damp brush. I stamped all the branch and twiggy bits with ground espresso distress ink which is a nice dark brown and used the same colour to paint details onto the berries. I used the ‘Winter Branches’ stamps to fill out the design but first I stamped the Christmas berries stamp on post-it notes so I could cut some masks to cover the berries while I stamped the branches over the top in the ground espresso ink.

I switched to versafine vintage sepia ink for the sentiment because it prints fine detail so well. To make the colour closer to the depth of ground espresso I just stamped several times in the stamp positioner.

Supplies

Stamps: Christmas berries 40-626(PB), winter branches 40-637, Joyful wishes 30-434
 
Inks: pine needles, peeled paint, festive berries, aged mahogany, ground espresso distress inks & vintage sepia versafine ink
     
Paper: hot pressed watercolour

Also: stamping platform