Tiny Towns under Alcohol Ink Skies

Posted: August 19, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Alcohol Ink, Dies, grafix, Penny Black, Sizzix, Spellbinders, Taylored Expressions, Tiny Tree | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I do like the look of little houses and buildings against a bold or colourful sky. I’ve done the same thing numerous times with watercolour panels. The little town featured in these cards is the Penny Black ‘tiny town‘ die. Once again I have completed my cards with embossed panels and PB or Taylored Expressions sentiments.

One thing you might notice is that some of the sentiments are stamped on the alcohol ink sky not on a strip of cardstock. After several alcohol ink sessions resulting in a stack of useful panels I remembered my alcohol lift ink. Lift ink does exactly as the name suggests, it lifts alcohol ink off the surface (in this case yupo or grafix craft plastic). Once lifted the ink needs to be wiped off the stamp and a few more applications made in exactly the same spot. It is also necessary to blot the stamped area with a tissue or cloth to remove any ink which has been diluted by the stamp pad. I was very happy with the results and you will see just how happy in a bunch of future cards.

Once again I have created different alcohol ink patterns by tilting the panel to move the ink, blowing the ink with a hand pump or spritzing the ink with isopropyl alcohol to create the spotty or starry look.

I used several different embossing folders to add snow, more little houses or the spellbinders nordic pattern to the background. The little houses embossing folder is from Vaessen Creative and was found at the new craft supply store in Ottawa.

Thank you for the encouraging comments left on the recent alcohol ink blog posts. I am glad to be providing some inspiration to get your own inks out. If you haven’t seen the previous alcohol ink posts look here and here.

And stay tuned there are more little houses, trees, baubles and Bethlehem skies to come. Have a great day!

Alcohol Ink Skies

Posted: August 14, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Alcohol Ink, Dies, grafix, Penny Black, polar bears | Tags: , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Well hello! Once again it has been weeks between blog posts, but here I am with a surprising selection of cards for you.

Surprising because they are alcohol ink panels. I don’t remember the last time I worked with alcohol inks. In the last month or so I have done little else in the art realm but work with alcohol inks. Why might that be? I have been working outside with said inks. My sister-in-law who was staying with me in June and July joined me at a friend’s house where we set up outside in the shade with a pleasant breeze and proceeded to experiment with the inks. As I mentioned I hadn’t use them for a long time and had forgotten many techniques. Since then I have refreshed my memory by watching a few videos and have worked outside with the inks numerous times where I don’t get headaches from the alcohol and everything dries quickly. Occasionally panels end up in the garden but that is a price I am willing to pay.

I made a few panels with 2 or 3 ink colours per panel and a generous amount of 99% isopropyl alcohol to move and blend the colours. I used an air blower (hand pump style, not electric) and sometimes a spritzer filled with isopropyl to add splatter which looks like snow or stars. I worked on yupo paper, grafix white craft plastic and Nara paper, all similar products and all from my existing supplies. I am still committed to ‘Using What I Have’ as much as possible.

The second surprising thing about these cards is that they are Christmas cards. Never have I started my Christmas cards in the middle of summer. I have never wanted to because I am influenced so much by the seasons. For whatever reason that is not the case this year. Future me is going to be very thankful for this strange occurrence. These are three cards I made featuring the ‘polar bears’ die from Penny Black and a PB stamp set, “All is Bright”. I really enjoy creating northern skies with alcohol inks; they seem to mimic the beauty of the northern lights I am yet to see in person. I know that polar bears have nothing to do with Christmas but when I create alcohol ink or watercolour skies I am reminded of the verse from Psalm 19, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.’ Thank you for visiting and reading to the end of this post; I will warn you now, the alcohol ink blog posts have just begun, so buckle up my friends!

Calendar Cards

Posted: February 18, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: border collection, Concord & 9th, cricut, Dies, online class, Patterned papers, Penny Black | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments

Here are some happy flowers to remind you of spring if you are still surrounded by snow like I am! Also to get you through winter there are details about a sale of my online classes at the bottom of this post.

I received a beautiful Earth Greetings calendar last year from my brother and sister-in-law in Australia. I enjoyed the original artwork all year while also planning to turn the pages into cards once the year was over. I decided to start with the cover which features a beautiful floral design by Jayne Branchflower. The cover has the January artwork on the back so I used bits of each design, both painted by Jayne.

In this post I will feature the blue background panel covered in Australian native flowers such as waratah, bottlebrush and flannel flower. I created two portrait orientation cards shown below. The accents on all the cards are cut from gold cardstock to co-ordinate with the bottlebrush (callistemon) and wattle in the design. The greeting below left was cut on the cricut, below right features a Penny Black border die and a retired C&9 sentiment.

The two cards below I made in landscape orientation and used the PB Border Collection die to add a scalloped edge on the right along with a cricut cut sentiment. On the left I die-cut a PB sentiment, So Many Thanks, and lay it over duralar so it would be easier to see on the busy background. It is also stacked up on navy cardstock to give it a bit more prominence. I created the narrow gold border with WaffleFlower A2 rectangle dies. The cards in this post obviously do not have to be made with calendar pages; your own printed, drawn or painted papers would work, as would scrapbook papers or art papers. I am just having fun with calendar pages right now and hope I have inspired you to recycle and repurpose a few of yours!

All my online classes are on sale for 50% off. Just click over to https://heathertelford.podia.com/ to purchase.

This post includes affiliate links from Scrap’n’Stamp . If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Birds on Birches

Posted: December 9, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: beneath the birches, Dies, Penny Black, sennelier watercolours, winter trees | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

In case you were wondering I have done some watercolouring for Christmas cards this year; it’s not all napkin art. I created a batch of cards for a friend which included either watercolour skies or watercolour trees.

I painted a blended sky with a couple of different blues then added hand-cut snowbanks and die-cut trees and birds from the Penny Black sets, ‘beneath the birches‘ and ‘winter trees‘.

This would be a simple card to make in multiples by painting a large sheet of watercolour paper to divide into sky panels then add the white and red elements. The greeting is from the PB ‘Christmas sentiments‘ set. How is your Christmas card sending going? I sat in a waiting room yesterday and wrote about eight cards instead of reading a book or scrolling so that advanced me through my list a little.

Eucalyptus & gold

Posted: December 3, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Airy, Dies, Penny Black, stocking stuffers | Tags: , | 5 Comments

I thought this would be my last napkin/serviette related post for now but I forgot about a pack of dinner napkins I bought in the summer. So maybe one more!?

But onto today’s cards; you can see in the photo above that the eucalyptus themed napkins are printed on a white base but my cards are all cream tones. When I adhered the single layer of the napkin to cream cardstock, the background transformed into cream not white.

The napkins are not Christmas themed themselves but I chose to add gold foliage die-cuts, gold embossed greetings and even some gold splatter on the one below to turn them into Christmassy cards. I used the Penny Black dies, ‘stocking stuffers‘ and ‘airy’.

The happy cut-out

Posted: October 22, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: cricut, Dies, Penny Black | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Today’s card is very similar to yesterday’s. I used the cricut to cut the letters H, A, P, P &Y from a cream panel which reveals the patterned paper layered below it. Because the patterned paper is the same size as the card front there is a border revealed by the smaller blank panel.

I’m know there are various ways to get the same effect but in some way it is easier to let the cricut cut the large letters in a straight line rather than expect myself to glue the cut-out letters in a perfect row! I used a Penny Black die to cut the little birthday word from pink cardstock. The patterned paper is one of the bonus pages you sometimes get in paper-crafting magazines. I think it’s the first time I’ve used one but I have a little stash which I will continue to put to use.

Shimmery Foliage

Posted: October 14, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Airy, Dies, Finetec paints, Leaflets, Leaves, Penny Black, Taylored Expressions | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Recently a friend and I got together and worked on wreath style wedding cards. Mine is featured further down in this post. After my friend left I used some of the die-cut foliage leftovers to make her a birthday card. You can see a few matte green leafy branches plus more cut from gold, bronze and reddish shimmer cardstock. I arranged it all either side of a stamped and embossed banner. This sort of a card takes a while to arrange in a balanced way so once I had it looking good I took a photo so I would be able to glue it all down again in the same way.

All the die-cutting was done with Penny Black foliage dies from a variety of sets. The curly twirly birthday sentiment is from the Taylored Expressions set, ‘In & Out Birthday’ embossed in gold powder

To make the wreath card I began by stamping a rough circle using gold watercolour paint on a jar lid. It was the lid of the lentil jar so yes, I had to wash it carefully before it was returned to the jar.

I arranged die-cut foliage around the gold circle not with perfect symmetry but I aimed for balance.

I cut the A, & and L on the cricut using the Linux Libertine Display G font. Both cards were made on cold pressed watercolour paper which has a nice creamy colour and soft texture.

Strips & Stripes

Posted: March 5, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: border collection, Hand painted | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

Amongst my recent watercolour panels there are quite a few with stripes. I was colour mixing and playing with wet into wet technique as I painted stripe over stripe to fill the panels.

I could have die cut a scalloped strip to add on top of the card front but I liked the layered look which reminds be a bit of carnival tents so I added first the painted strip, then over the top a scalloped piece of white. The scallop die is from the Penny Black set, ‘border collection’ and the sentiment from the ever faithful PB ‘snippets’ set.

The heart themed card below is the same layout with a couple of variations. As you can see I still used a striped panel but die cut some hearts from it and lined them up to span the card front.

Although the hearts looked cute in a row, the white card front looked too plain so I added an embossed panel as the background to add texture and interest without adding more colour.

The little happy birthday is from Darkroom Door, once again I used a small sentiment; I do have a soft spot for tiny text.

These two are examples made for my upcoming in-person card design class which still has a few available spots in it.

Book Trees

Posted: December 20, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Dies, modern xmas tree, Penny Black | Tags: | 6 Comments

I gave this Christmas card to a friend who is a journalist. As she studied it she exclaimed, ‘What? You cut up books!’ I explained that yes, I did, but they were not my precious books, most were picked up at second hand book sales or thrift stores.

I painted a selection of pages with distress inks and when the pages dried I glued them to cardstock before using triangle dies to cut them out. After I arranged them on an embossed background I cut a strip of black cardstock into small pieces to tuck under the trees as trunks. Just another simple idea with vintage papers.

Layered Poinsettias

Posted: December 3, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Dies, Gina K, holiday flora embossing folder, joy of giving, juniper, layered poinsettia, layered Xmas wreath die set, Penny Black, stocking stuffers | Tags: | 1 Comment

I have a box of berries, leaves, pine boughs and other festive foliage along with some watercoloured panels waiting to be put to use. I cut poinsettias from the watercoloured panels and had fun arranging them on an embossed panel with other foliage die cuts. (PB ‘joy of giving‘, ‘juniper‘, ‘layered Xmas wreath‘ and stocking stuffers)

The pretty background panel is Neenah solar white embossed with the Gina K ‘holiday flora’.

I like the variety of patterns and colours in the petals and leaves when they are cut from a watercolour panel. I held a couple of Christmas card making nights for my church and we made watercolour panels using my smoosh, spritz and swipe method. We ‘smooshed’ distress inks on a teflon mat, ‘spritzed’ the ink with water to dilute and move it, then ‘swiped’ the watercolour paper through the ink as many times as needed to make a well coloured panel.

This post includes affiliate links from Foiled Fox and Scrap n Stamp. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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