Floral Arrangement
Posted: March 15, 2018 Filed under: floral arrangement | Tags: distress oxide inks, liquid metals, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps 11 Comments
I have a burst of colour and some sprinklings of sparkle to share today. I am enjoying the entries in the ‘Sparkle With Us‘ challenge but I would love to see more. There are still five days left to add your sparkly project to the gallery, just click over to see all the details.
I used some new and some older distress oxide inks to create my colourful background. My paper is hot pressed watercolour and my technique was pressing the oxide pad on a craft mat, spritzing with water then swiping my paper through the ink. I did this numerous times but always dried the panel between swipes, that way I was able to build up layers and pockets of colour. After I had added my last layer of oxide ink I put some diluted liquid metal (metallic sky) on my craft mat and swiped the panel through that; the result was some blue shimmer over the blue painted area.
To create my spray of flowers I used the Penny Black ‘floral arrangement’ die to cut three flower sprays from ‘parchment’ patterned vellum, one of the designs in the grafix assorted vellum pad. I snipped the die cut flowers to create a layered arrangement of small flowers and leaves. The die does cut a larger flower, but I didn’t use it on this card. I put all my die cuts in a box and splattered gold paint from the gansai tambi starry colors set over them. After they dried I attached the leaves and flowers on my panel and I added a drop of glue to some of the flowers and sprinkled gold micro beads onto the glue. I co-ordinated the sentiment with the beads by embossing it in gold. All the supplies are listed below.
Do you think I might be able to label this one mixed media?
Supplies
Stamp: smile today
Die: floral arrangement
Inks: tattered rose, candied apple, blueprint sketch, fossilized amber distress oxide, versamark
Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, parchment patterned vellum, neenah solar white
Paint: gansai tambi starry colors, metallic sky liquid metal
Also: On point glue, gold micro beads, gold embossing powder
Exquisite
Posted: March 9, 2018 Filed under: birds and banners, exquisite, Script | Tags: Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress stains 7 Comments
My final springy card for this week features this lovely big flower in two of my favourite distress stains, chipped sapphire and seedless preserves. I stamped this one on cold pressed watercolour paper so once again having the panel in a stamp positioner helped me get a good impression. I inked first with chipped sapphire over parts of the flower, stamped, wiped off the stamp and inked sections again but this time with seedless preserves. I ended up with some blue flowers, some pink and some a purple mix.
I blended the petals of all the flowers with a damp brush and let them all dry. I was going to leave all the centres white but it didn’t look right so I ended up painting them all darker with undiluted stain. To create a soft textured background I dropped a few drops of water around the flower then partially stamped the script stamp in the same ink stains. I dabbed out some ink with a paper towel and added some splatter as well. To frame the whole panel I ran the seedless preserves dauber around the edges then softened the colour with a damp brush.
To complete the card I stamped a sentiment on a fancy little die cut banner and popped it up over the stem of the flower.
Supplies
Stamps: exquisite, script, banner sentiment (Penny Black)
Die: birds & banners
Inks: chipped sapphire & seedless preserves distress stains, majestic blue versafine ink
Paper: cold & hot pressed watercolour paper
Aviary
Posted: March 8, 2018 Filed under: aviary, Coloured pencil | Tags: Faber-Castell Polychromos Colour Pencil, Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolour paints, Penny Black stamps, Tsukineko Versafine inks 7 Comments
I have been using my coloured pencils more often recently. For this card I used them to add finishing touches and details after I had painted the majority of the design with watercolours. I used my gansai tambi paints for the watercolour then polychromos pencils for the details. I even wrote down the numbers just in case you were interested but really you don’t need my choices you could just use your own favourites.
One thing I did which worked in my favour was limit my colour palette. I mixed colours I had already used rather than continually adding new ones. This helps with the cohesiveness of the finished panel. I started by stamping the ‘aviary’ stamp on hot pressed watercolour paper in versafine smokey grey. I painted the area surrounding the birdhouse first with blue and green paint. I kept it mainly blue and used a ‘wet into wet’ method, painting around edges first with water then adding paint. A medium sized brush that comes to a good point can help with this as there is a lot of space to cover but also some tricky areas to navigate. Also if your brush is too small or doesn’t hold liquid well you will be forever picking up more water or paint.
Once the background was dry I painted the flower pots in brown and added shadows with the blue I used on the sky. After that I painted the birdhouse, once again with the brown and blue then added black for some darker shadows and definition. I decided to limit the flowers to pink and purple painting the taller plant on the left with a diluted purple paint and the magnolia on the right with touches of dark pink blended out with water. I left the centre flowers to do with coloured pencil. I used the same green from the background to paint the leaves and a combination of colours already used to paint the birds.
I couldn’t decide on a colour for the foreground the pots are sitting on so I used the dirty paint water. It turned out to be a teeny bit on the purple side but mainly on the dirty side so it didn’t clash with anything else. I added shadows with black. With all the basic painting done I switched to coloured pencils to add fine details. I picked pencils that matched the paint colours and went over some outlines or added tiny details inside leaves and flowers.
Thanks for dropping by today.
Supplies
Stamps: Aviary
Inks:
Paints: Kuretake gansai tambi 20, 36, 57, 46, 63
Pencils: Faber Castell polychromos 108, 158, 188, 274, 136, 142, 141, 231, 101
Parade of flowers
Posted: March 7, 2018 Filed under: Parade of flowers | Tags: Dr Ph Martin Hydrus watercolor paints, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks, Tsukineko Versafine inks 5 Comments
The flowers continue to bloom across my blog this week and it’s making me pretty keen for spring to arrive. Today’s poppies are as realistic and detailed as you are likely to see from me! A little different from my distress stain loose and watery florals. I used a stamp positioner to stamp ‘parade of flowers’ in antique linen distress ink on cold pressed watercolour paper; because of the texture of the cold pressed paper I stamped a few times to guarantee a complete image.
All the painting was done with Dr Ph Martins Hydrus watercolours. When undiluted the colours are very vibrant so I put only a drop of each colour in a palette then added water. To keep the colour scheme muted and cohesive I limited my paint choices. The petals are painted with ‘deep red rose’ and the leaves and stems a mix of phthalo green, deep red rose and Venetian brown. The centres of the flowers are gamboge, with dark details added in ultramarine and Venetian brown.
I worked on one petal at a time painting first with water then dropping in some deep red rose paint. I blended the colour to the edges then added more paint if necessary to create shadow or deeper colour near centre of flower. While each petal dried I worked on a non-adjacent one. When all the petals were dry I added some more red here and there to create a bit more depth and when that dried I used a very fine tipped brush to paint veins on some of the petals. I wanted to stamp the sentiment on a matching panel so I painted diluted deep red rose paint on a scrap of hot pressed watercolor paper the die cut three tags using die from ‘gift card pocket’ set. With the stamp postioner I was able to stamp ‘With Love’ sentiment from ‘special wishes’ set on tags one at a time so when together they would over lap each other.
I wrapped twine around top of painted panel, attached the three sentiment tags over the top and attached the panel to a natural coloured card base.
Don’t forget to pop over to the ‘Sparkle with Us’ challenge hosted by The Foiled Fox and me. There is already some sparkly inspiration linked up but we’d love to see more.
Supplies
Stamps: parade of flowers, special wishes
Die: gift card pocket
Paper: rough 100% cotton watercolour paper, hot pressed watercolour paper
Ink: antique linen distress ink, imperial purple versafine ink
Paints: deep red rose, gamboge, pthalo green, Venetian brown, ultramarine Dr Ph Martins Hydrus watercolors (soon to be available at The Foiled Fox)
Also: antique hemp twine
tulip bouquet
Posted: March 6, 2018 Filed under: Brusho, tulip bouquet | Tags: Brusho, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks 3 Comments
Here are some more blooms to spur on the spring feelings. I worked on an abstract brusho background, one of the panels I mentioned back in an earlier post created with some sprinkled and spritzed brusho. I took my colour cues from the brusho and stamped the stems and leaves in forest moss distress ink and petals in spiced marmalade.
Next I sprinkled very small amounts of gamboge brusho in the tulips and activated it with a damp brush. I did one petal at a time to stop them all just blending into the same shade. I made sure some areas stayed dark and others were more diluted and light. I did the same thing for the stems and leaves but used turquoise and olive green brusho.
The panel is cold pressed watercolour paper so there is some texture to it. Have you tried stamping over a brusho background? I enjoyed the way the brusho dictated the colour scheme for me but didn’t take over the whole panel.
Supplies:
Stamps: tulip bouquet, smile today!
Paper: cold pressed watercolour paper, neenah natural white
Inks: spiced marmalade distress ink, forest moss distress ink, olympia green versafine ink
Paints: gamboge, turquoise, olive green brusho
Tools: Stamping platform
Blossom branch video tutorial
Posted: March 5, 2018 Filed under: blossom branch | Tags: Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks, Tsukineko Versafine inks 14 Comments
I am happy to be sharing all manner of sweet spring goodness here and on the Penny Black blog this week. Starting the week is this gorgeous blossom branch stamp and a video tutorial. Blossom branch is a brushstroke stamp so I was after a hand painted look on my finished project. In my previous video I used distress stains applied to the stamp. For this project I worked with distress inks and markers, once again a water-soluble medium but in a format that can be applied with more accuracy than distress stains. The result is more detail on the final image.
I worked in a stamp positioning tool so I could add one or two colours at a time, three shades of green for the leaves and several pinks for the petals. You can see my process in the video. At one point the camera cut out without me realising so you don’t see all the blending of petal. I used the same process for all the flowers though, so you can get the idea from all that was filmed. I included a tip for a quick matching envelope too.
Hope you have fun with this technique. See you tomorrow.
Join my online card class COLOUR CLUES to create floral beauties!
Supplies
Stamps: blossom branch, choose happy
Inks: versafine vintage sepia, shabby shutters, crushed olive, peeled paint marker,
worn lipstick, abandoned coral, barn door marker, gathered twigs marker
Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper
Also: MISTI, gold signo gel pen
Airy thank you
Posted: March 2, 2018 Filed under: Airy, Brusho, Foiling 5 Comments
More sparkle for you today. I’m hoping to inspire you to ‘Sparkle With Us’, and what I mean by that is join in the challenge I’m hosting with The Foiled Fox; you can read about it on yesterday’s post. If you like to add a little sparkle here and there on your projects this challenge is for you. If your projects are seriously sparkly then this is also the challenge for you. I chose foil to add the sparkle on this project and I used peel n stick toner sheets to make some ‘ready to foil’ die cut elements. The Foiled Fox shared these sheets with me and they made adding foiled details so easy!
I started by making an abstract background panel with brusho. (Have I mentioned how much I love brusho?) This panel features sea green and olive green brusho but you can see turquoise and orange showed up also. I spritzed a large panel of cold pressed watercolour paper then sprinkled the brusho over it and let it spread. I did a bit of tilting and spritzing and left the panel to dry. As it was a large panel I ended up cutting it into four smaller panels to be used on separate projects. I used two new dies, ‘airy’ and ‘so many thanks’ to cut a couple of leafy branches and a sentiment from the peel n stick toner sheet then ran them through the minc with gold foil. You can make your own toner sheets with a laser printer but they are not sticky on the back so I felt spoiled using these convenient adhesive ones. I peeled off the backing and stuck them on my brusho panel. It is tricky to photograph foiled projects but I think you can see the shine!
Hope you can ‘Sparkle With Us‘ this month.
Supplies:
Dies: airy, so many thanks
Paper: cold pressed watercolour paper, thermoweb deco foil peel n stick toner sheets
Paints: sea green, olive green brusho
Also: gold foil, minc
Sparkle With Us challenge
Posted: March 1, 2018 Filed under: Challenges, Gilding Flakes, Swirling Wings, The Foiled Fox, Triple Banner | Tags: Gilding, Penny Black creative dies, WOW embossing powders 4 Comments
It’s time to put on your sparkly shoes, my friends, or at least your sparkly embellishments! I have teamed up with The Foiled Fox for a sparkly challenge that starts now.
I might have got a little bit carried away in choosing sparkly elements for my card. There is not much that doesn’t sparkle on this one. You can follow my lead and pull out all the sparkle or you can choose to feature just a little sparkle. Either approach will qualify you to enter the ‘Sparkle With Us’ challenge.
I used some lovely shimmer cardstock from The Foiled Fox and a whole bunch of gilding flakes. I know they can end up all over the place but I love the textured look of gilding flakes. Because there is some creasing and overlapping there is a lot of variation in the gold of the flakes. I also used gold embossing powder for my gold on gold on gold sparkly card. There are some step by step photos on the Foiled Fox blog so make sure you click on over.
I am excited to share some more sparkly inspiration over the next few weeks and hope to see your creations in the challenge gallery: you can get there by clicking the frog below.
Sparkly Supplies
Stamps: Penny Black banner sentiments set
Dies: swirling wings, triple banner die set
Cardstock: shimmer antique gold, neenah natural white,
Also: stick it adhesive, gold gilding flakes, gold embossing powder
Lilacs
Posted: February 28, 2018 Filed under: lilacs | Tags: Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress stains, Tsukineko Versafine inks 5 Comments
Spring is in the air at Penny Black and is beginning to feel like it here in Ottawa too. The method for this card is exactly the same as shown in my lilac video tutorial This card was stamped with distress stains, one of my favourite mediums for creating a loose watercoloury look. I have used the distress stain daubers for years now to ink my stamps but you may have heard, sadly the daubers are being discontinued. Even though I have a healthy supply of daubers I decided to use the spray stains for this card instead just to see if I could get the same effects with a paint brush. It takes an extra step but it worked and the results made me just as happy. If you have the daubers you apply stain directly to the stamp. (I will just add that the daubers are still available at the Foiled Fox right now; I intend to keep using my daubers and refill them from the spray stain bottles. To do this I just carefully lever off the dauber top and pour in some stain then press the dauber top firmly back on.)
Rather than dob stain on the stamp with the dauber I sprayed some stain into a palette and painted it on to the ‘lilacs’ stamp with a watercolour brush. I used bundled sage and forest moss on the leaves and seedless preserves and dusty concord on the petals. There are some pale lilacs in the background; I stamped them first by painting stain (bundled sage and seedless preserves) onto the stamp and stamping it on a wet piece of hot pressed watercolour paper. I just stamped randomly to spread some colour around then pressed a paper towel over the panel to remove excess water and colour. I dried the panel completely then transferred it to my stamping platform so I could stamp one colour at a time. I painted seedless preserves stain on the stamp first and stamped onto my panel. Without cleaning the stamp I added some dusty concord to a few areas on the stamp and stamped again. The stain blended both on the stamp and on the paper. I cleaned the stamp and used the same technique for the leaves, bundled sage first then forest moss in a few areas to create shadow and depth to the image.
To add another couple of flowers I repeated the process described above after repositioning the panel. I added a sentiment from the new ‘grateful heart’ set with imperial purple versafine ink.
Thanks for dropping by and thanks for all your encouragement.
Supplies
Stamps: lilacs, grateful heart
.
Distress stains: bundled sage, forest moss, seedless preserves, dusty concord
.
Ink: versafine imperial purple ink
Paper: hot pressed watercolour
Also: MISTI or stamping platform
Pencil tulips
Posted: February 23, 2018 Filed under: tulip bouquet | Tags: Faber-Castell Polychromos Colour Pencil, Minc, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Prismacolor pencils 7 Comments
I had fun with a few new techniques and products when creating this card. Those white spots on the kraft cardstock are not paint splats even though they look a bit like I spilt something on my panel. I sprayed some minc reactive mist onto a kraft panel then ran it through the minc with white foil. I realise I could have used white gesso or paint but the thing I like about the foiling in this instance is that it has no texture or bulk so stamping over it was easy.
I stamped the Penny Black ‘tulip bouquet’ stamp in the corner and part of a sentiment from the PB ‘choose happy’ set both in versafine onyx black ink then started colouring. Since I began teaching my pencil colouring technique class I have had pencils within reach most of the time. I grabbed a couple of prismacolor pinks, a green and a polychromos white to colour the tulips and leaves. The antique hemp twine seems to be popping up on quite a few cards too; it’s not too thick to knot or tie in a bow and it blends in with most colour schemes and especially kraft cardstock. To add a little interest to my white card base I gave it an all-over texture treatment by running it through the die-cutting machine several times with the new ‘rows of stitches’ die from Penny Black.
I really enjoyed reading the responses to my last card – the one with the clever black brusho design. Some of you have already experienced the joy of black brusho and others are now wanting to try it. I’d love to see your creations if you do try it; please leave me a comment or use the contact me option.
Supplies
PB Stamps: tulip bouquet, choose happy
PB Die: rows of stitches
Ink: versafine onyx black ink
Paper: kraft
Pencils: prismacolor 925, 930, 911, polychromos 101
Also: minc reactive mist, white foil, minc
Heather Telford 