Thanks for being thoughtful

Posted: March 1, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Penny Black, square frames, Unfolding | Tags: , , | 5 Comments

I have yet another distress stain no-line watercolour card for you today. I have received a few questions about my recent distress stain outline cards. Readers have asked if I stamped with ink of some kind first then painted the stain. Not for this card or the previous two. I ink the stamp with stain which is much more ‘liquidy’ than ink and stamp with a stamp positioning tool on watercolour paper. The stain soaks in a little but also sits on top of the paper for a short time. I try to blend straight away so I can take advantage of the wetness of the stain.

For this panel I inked the flowers with ripe persimmon and fired brick distress stain. You can paint both onto the stamp then print or you can do one colour then the other, allowing the stains to overlap a bit for some nice blending.  I inked the leaves and stems with forest moss and mowed lawn then blended the leaves after stamping. If you have stains but haven’t tried inking your stamps with them it does create some pretty blends and the only outline colours are the ones you are blending into the petals and leaves.

As with my other recent cards I added a sentiment in black ink and a simple frame cut with the square frames dies. The sentiment set is called ‘sending thanks’ and is a little set with lots of possibilities!

Thanks for dropping by this week; I’ll be back on Monday for a blog hop and other exciting news!

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To give you a hug

Posted: February 28, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: flutterby, Penny Black, square frames | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

‘Tis the season for new floral stamps, even if it is not the season yet for new florals! I used my tried and true distress stain watercolour method for this little bunch of tulips. I inked the petals with dusty concord and festive berries distress stain. I often use a brush now and paint stain onto the stamp. That way I don’t contaminate the dauber top of my distress stains with other colours and if I’m using the spray stain I can just dip my paintbrush into the stain I have sprayed into a palette.

I try to paint straight after stamping so the stain is still wet on the watercolour paper and can be blended very easily to fill the petals and leaves.

I added some splatter around the panel as my image was confined to one corner leaving a lot of empty space elsewhere. I used the ‘negative frame’ which is a bonus when I cut the whole set of ‘square frames’ from cardstock. I have kept my new square dies joined together in pairs so I can get these ‘negative frames’ easily. I didn’t want to cover my corner flowers so I snipped off some of the frame to wrap around the image instead.

Isn’t this a sweet sentiment?

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Timeless

Posted: February 27, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: square frames, timeless | Tags: , , | 9 Comments

Today’s card features the ‘title stamp’ (like title track) from the new Penny Black release.This big bold rose stamp, ‘Timeless‘, is such a versatile one. I used blended distress stain for my card but it will be great for embossing, no-line colouring and pencil colouring as well.

I used my stamp positioner so I could work with a few colours at a time but it would work without a positioner. I inked the top petals in festive berries distress stain, stamped on cold pressed watercolour paper then inked the lower petals with dusty concord stain and stamped again. If you still have the daubers you can ink direct to stamp but if you have the sprays you need to paint some stain on your stamp for this technique. You could use inks or markers but I like how wet the stamped image is when I use stain. I am able to use a brush and water immediately to blend the stain to fill the petals. You can see on some of the petals I added extra stain for shadow and depth

I stamped the leaves in two green stains and blended them also. I finished the panel off with a cool new sentiment then added a frame cut with the new ‘square frames‘ dies. I have kept my dies joined together so I will get both the decorative frames and the plain frames when I run it through the machine. It does mean that I get several frames each time I use it but that’s ok; I’m keeping them in reserve.

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Blooming boots!

Posted: February 20, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: blooming boots, square frames | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

Penny Black has a new release; you probably saw some sneak peeks on the PB social media or maybe you saw this card as a peek on my instagram. The new release is called ‘Timeless‘ and it is full of spring and summer loveliness. To celebrate Penny Black is hosting a giveaway.

Isn’t this a cute stamp? Blooming boots! I guess boots could work as a vase if they were waterproof. I used distress stains to stamp this happy colour scheme but you could use any water soluble ink that blends well after stamping. I inked the tulips with mustard seed and spiced marmalade distress stains. Now that the daubers are discontinued I paint stain onto the stamp with a brush. After stamping the tulips I wiped the stamp and inked the leaves with mowed lawn stain. While the stamped stain was still damp I blended it with a brush and water then dried the panel.

I painted black soot stain onto the boot part of the stamp then stamped and blended to fill the boots. By drying the rest of the stamping first I prevented the black stain from bleeding into the flowers and leaves. I used the new die set ‘square frames’ to cut a green frame. As my dies are not  divided up they cut not only the decorative frames but also plain rectangles and that is what I used here. I finished the card with a sentiment from the super-useful new set ‘grateful sentiments’ in black versafine ink.

I am currently enjoying not tulips but a giant amaryllis; it is 80cm tall and each one of the five flowers measures 20cm across. It is huge and beautiful!

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Blissful blossoms

Posted: January 18, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: blissful blossoms, royal swirl | Tags: , , | 14 Comments

It is hard to believe I haven’t inked this pretty stamp before now. I made up for it by repeat stamping on a large panel to make into a set of cards. I put the 10″x 7″ hot pressed watercolour panel in my stamp positioning tool and ended up stamping PB ‘blissful blossoms’ four times.

Each time I stamped I followed the same order. First I inked the whole stamp in scattered straw distress ink and dabbed some wild honey and abandoned coral ink here and there on the flowers, spritzed it with water. After stamping I cleaned the stamp, then inked all the stems and leaves in peeled paint ink, spritzed and stamped again. I kept partially inking with markers, spritzing and stamping until the flowers were well coloured. Before moving the panel and stamp to do another print I blended over the stamping with a paint brush and water.

I repeated the process three more times to fill the panel. I was able to orient the stamp so the stems and flowers filled the space and looked like one big patterned panel.

Once the panel was done I had to decide how to divide it for different designs. I could have done four of the same card but no, I wanted to come up with a few options. I pulled out a pretty PB die, a PB sentiment set and some green cardstock to create a set of five cards.

The decorative die does not cut right across, it cuts out the scroll work but scores either side for folding. On several of the cards I cut on the score line for a border instead of a fold.

By double matting and popping up the panel even the last scrap became a card. All the sentiments are from the handy dandy ‘happy snippets’ set.

Supplies

Stamps: blissful blossoms, happy snippets (PB)

Dies: pop on a fold -royal swirl (PB)

Inks: scattered straw, dried marigold, abandoned coral, peeled paint, versamark, shady line versafine clair

Markers: peeled paint, dried marigold, abandoned coral, ground espresso

Cardstock: hot pressed watercolour, neenah cream, olive green

Also: Stamp positioner, white embossing powder, linen twine

Alcohol ink trio

Posted: January 15, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Alcohol Ink, Dragonfly Frame, Serenity | Tags: , , | 11 Comments

I created these alcohol ink panels months ago! They were the result of a primary colours experiment with pool (blue), raspberry (red) and honeycomb (yellow) alcohol inks and both heavy and light weight yupo paper. I restricted myself to the three colours to see what I could come up with and how they reacted with each other.

I was able to get very soft blends by adding rubbing alcohol and tilting the yupo around. This panel was done on light weight yupo which is translucent. When I held it up to the light the colours softened and looked like stained glass. I decided I had to cut the cardstock out behind the dragonfly ‘window’ so a light could be placed under the card to show off its soft blended colour. Not a real tealight mind you, remember this is paper crafting! I took a photo to give you an idea of the pretty stained glass effect you see with a soft light underneath.

The same colours appeared but with more lines by working the inks for longer. By that I mean that I kept adding and tilting and blending so there are more secondary and tertiary colours in the mix.

When it came to making the panels into cards I decided die cuts over the  top was all I wanted to add. I used three Penny Black dies, dragonfly frame, serenity and heartfelt thanks. For all the cards I put double sided adhesive on the back of the green cardstock before die cutting the images and words.

In the final sample I was able to keep some of each ink colour distinct as well as each secondary colour (blue+yellow=green) (yellow+red=orange) (red+blue=purple). There is also a bit of brown which is is a tertiary colour made when a primary and a secondary mix.

I created this panel by dropping the inks onto the yupo panel and letting them move and fill the space. When there was a good mix of colour patterning the whole area I switched to placing tiny drops of ink or rubbing alcohol onto the panel to create the bubble patterns. Each tiny drop expanded into a little circle or blob shape. The pattern looked very busy all on its own so I just added a small die cut word.

Supplies

Dies: serenity, dragonfly frame, heartfelt thanks (Penny Black)
Inks: pool, raspberry, honeycomb Ranger alcohol inks

Paper: yupo both light and heavy weight, neenah cream cardstock, green textured cardstock

Also: double sided adhesive, rubbing alcohol

Snow forest

Posted: January 4, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: A Pocket Full, snow forest | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

Snowy scenes and thank you cards will keep on popping up on the blog. This one made with the PB stamp, ‘snow forest’, was very simple to make. I put the stamp in the stamp positioner then inked part of it in Catherine Poolers ‘icing on the cake’ ink, stamped then randomly inked in ‘over coffee’, stamped and finally the same with ‘eucalyptus’ ink. With the whole image stamped I blended the larger distinct tree trunks with water to get the watercolour effect.

I ended up painting over some areas, not all, with water also which softened the contrasts but still left light and dark areas. I pressed the three inks onto my glass mat so I could pick up ink to paint the snowy forest floor.

To complete the card I matted in dark green cardstock and die cut a banner for the sentiment. I embossed the sentiment with weathered white powder which gives an antique, and I think, snowy effect.

Supplies

Stamps: snow forest, banner sentiments

Dies: a pocketfull

Inks: eucalyptus, icing on the cake, over coffee (Catherine Pooler), versamark

Paper: hot pressed watercolour, green cardstock

Also: MISTI, weathered white embossing powder, glass mat

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