Shimmer poppies
Posted: April 26, 2019 Filed under: Coloured pencil, simple sentiments, Uncategorized, Wonderland | Tags: Altenew, distress oxide inks, Faber-Castell Polychromos Colour Pencil, Tsukineko Versafine inks 10 Comments
I’ve been enjoying some pencil colouring lately, especially on ‘Stardream’ shimmer paper. (this background is stardream lapis lazuli) Working on a dark background requires a different approach but the results can be quite eye catching. I stamped a few of the ‘wonderland’ poppies from Altenew on blue shimmer cardstock with antique linen distress oxide ink. The oxide ink ends up looking almost white on such a bold background.
My pencils are Faber Castell Polychromos but you could use whatever coloured pencils you have on hand. With a dark background it helps to lay down a light base of white before adding colours over the top. I chose two pink pencils plus a white to colour the petals and blended from white on the petal edges to dark pink at the petal base. I preserved the stamped lines where I could but occasionally coloured over them and did what repairs I could with my white pencil. I used a bright green pencil for the stems and sepals and a tiny spot of yellow in the centre of the lowest poppy.
As always it is hard to capture the shimmer of the paper on camera but I think you can see a bit of it in each photo. I stamped and embossed the sentiment on the panel but made a patchy job of it so I stamped it on cream cardstock and cut it out with the avery elle sentiment dies that are never far from my side these days! I popped the sentiment up on dimensional tape and added the panel to a cream card base.
I love that sentiment and hope you all stay awesome today, my friends!
Supplies
Floral Faves giveaway – Bouquet Ballet
Posted: March 15, 2019 Filed under: bouquet ballet, Inktense pencils, Penny Black, Uncategorized | Tags: Hand lettering, Inktense, Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolour paints, Penny Black stamps 16 Comments
This little bouquet is one of my favourites from the recent Penny Black release. With its combination of flowers I thought it was perfect for wrapping up my current giveaway with the Foiled Fox. All you have to do to enter is visit my earlier post or The Foiled Fox post and leave us a comment telling use your favourite flower. We will close the comments on Sunday night and announce two winners next Tuesday.
I’m not absolutely sure what the flowers are in this bouquet, perhaps a hydrangea, a couple of poppies and some little bell shaped flowers. Once again I embossed the outline stamp with platinum powder; it’s so classy, I just keep choosing it. I stamped off the edge twice to get a border design and used Inktense pencils for the watercolouring.
I built up colour on the pink flowers and leaves in layers letting each one dry before adding another. On the blue flower I painted it all pale blue then added dots of the same blue pencil to the centres. I painted around the outside of the bouquets with a mustard pencil and blended it out to nothing with water. I added some fine splatter over the flowers using the same pencils.
Inspired by a beautiful hand lettered sentiment on of Shauna’s recent cards I used a dip pen and wrote the sentiment in gold ink on a strip of co-ordinating cardstock. I splattered some of the same champagne gold gansai tambi ink over the panel before putting the card together with a gold mat and a burgandy card base.
Supplies
My Mother
Posted: September 28, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized 129 Comments
My dear mother passed away earlier this week and I am now in Australia with my family. She died peacefully with my father and brother by her side. My mother was a faithful, loving, wonderful wife, mother, sister, Nanna and friend. She is now in the presence of Jesus, her saviour whom she loved and trusted throughout her 82 years. I am so blessed to have had such a loving, prayerful, unselfish role model and friend.
Berry Speckled
Posted: August 16, 2017 Filed under: Berry speckled, Uncategorized | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks, Ranger Distress stains 9 Comments
This branch, ‘berry speckled’, is definitely one of my favourites from the new Penny Black release ‘Be Merry‘. It is pretty on its own but will combine well with other Christmas foliage I’m sure. I decided to watercolour with it, and used a stamp positioning tool to help me add colours one at a time. I worked on hot pressed watercolour paper with masking fluid lightly splattered over it. First I inked the berries in festive berries distress stain and stamped them, next I did the pine needles in peeled paint distress stain and finally the twigs in gathered twigs distress marker. I dried all the initial stamping then added the background blue by painting water close to the edges of the stamping then adding stormy sky distress stain to the wet areas.
Once all the ink and stain was dry I added definition to the berries with a candied apple distress marker. I removed the masking fluid to reveal little white dots, added the sentiment in smokey gray versafine ink and matted the panel in red.
Supplies
Stamps: berry speckled, peace & love (PB)
Inks: festive berries, peeled paint, stormy sky distress stains & candied apple, gathered twigs distress markers (Ranger) smokey gray versafine (Tsukineko)
Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, red cardstock
Also: masking fluid
Dressed in snow
Posted: August 10, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Penny Black stamps, Tsukineko Memento inks 14 Comments
Yes, it’s a snow scene, which means there are new Christmas stamps in the house! Penny Black is showing off their new collection ‘Be Merry’ over the next few weeks and giving away gift certificates to celebrate the new products. This lovely scene is a single stamp and I have inked it in a simple colour to show how easy it is to create a pretty snow scene.
I’ve mentioned before how much I like memento ‘northern pine’ ink for wintry tree scenes; when you add water to it, it separates into a teal blue and a brown. One colour becomes three and gives you green foliage, brown bark and the look of blue snow or sky. I stamped the large image on hot pressed watercolour paper with the help of a stamp positioner then spritzed carefully over the trees on the left and far right.
I wanted to preserve some white areas so I spritzed from quite a distance and covered the some areas with my hand as I did it so that I wouldn’t lose the look of snow on the lower branches. To finish off the scene I matted with dark green cardstock and attach to a white card base. I know I’ll be working with this stamp again!
Supplies
Stamp: Dressed in Snow (PB)
Ink: Memento Northern Pine (Tsukineko)
Paper: Hot pressed watercolour paper (Fabriano)
Happy Bliss
Posted: February 28, 2017 Filed under: happy bliss, Peerless watercolours, Uncategorized | Tags: Peerless Transparent Watercolors, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps 6 Comments
The colour scheme and style of today’s card is inspired by the amazingly talented and colour savvy Jill Foster. I painted the circle flowers in two blues and saw them sitting on the paper looking pale and weak. When I decided to mix things up with a yellow background they were happy again. I could imagine myself painting the flowers yellow and the sky blue but swapping things around was a bit of jump for me. Jill does these clever things all the time with beautiful results so maybe I will step out of my colour comfort zone more often.
I used Peerless watercolour paints to paint the birds and flowers, then, when it was dry and a bit sad, I decided to dive back in with some orange and yellow peerless paint to fill in the background. I kept things dark on one side and light on the other (like yesterday’s card) which suggests a light source. To complete the card I splattered some black ink and added a handlettered sentiment on a die cut banner.
What you can’t see because I forgot to photograph it (and believe it or not I cannot find this card right now) is the die-cut circle flower inside the card.
Hope your day is bright!
Supplies
Stamps: Happy Bliss (PB)
Dies: Illuminate(inside the card), Triple Banner(PB)
Pens: Exclusive Calligraphy nib holder (Foiled Fox)
Paint: Peerless transparent watercolours
Papers: hot pressed watercolour paper, Neenah epic black cardstock
Inks: versafine onyx black ink for stamping (Tsukineko) DrPh Martins bleedproof white for calligraphy
Stencil negative
Posted: January 24, 2017 Filed under: Brusho, Promenade, Uncategorized | Tags: Brusho, Penny Black stamps, Penny Black stencils 14 Comments
The technique I have to share today is one of those ‘don’t waste all that pretty paint’ techniques. Sometimes I will be creating something and paint or ink ends up all over a mat, stamp or in this case, a stencil after the initial project is completed. Rather than simply rinse the ink or paint off it is usually worth taking a print or swiping a piece of paper through the excess paint to pick up all the pretty.
I was creating panels using the Penny Black stencil, promenade, along with molding paste and brusho paint. Once I had finished sprinkling brusho over the stencil and paste, I spritzed with water before removing the stencil. The stencil was covered in diluted brusho so I pressed it onto a piece of cold pressed watercolour paper and this patterned piece was the result. Incidentally I also made two cards with the stencilled shape on them but they did not photograph well at all. They look fine in real life!
I like the ‘negative’ print from the stencil enough that I might just create a negative print as a technique on its own. But then would I end up with a pretty ‘positive print’ as a by product of my creating!?!
This post was brought to you from my ‘pile of possibilities‘.
Supplies:
Stamps: Amazing (PB)
Stencils: Promenade (PB)
Inks: Versamark(Tsukineko)
Paint: Brusho (Colourcraft)
Paper: Canson 100% cotton cold pressed watercolour paper, Neenah epic black
Also: white embossing powder
Sweetheart
Posted: January 18, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized 6 Comments
I’m featuring another pretty stamp from the Penny Black ‘Follow your heart‘ release today. This one is appropriately named sweetheart; don’t you think those delicate little flowers are sweet? I used the emboss resist technique to make the heart appear white on a pink, yellow and orange background.
I started by stamping the heart on watercolour paper in versamark then embossed in clear powder. I used peerless watercolours to paint over the embossed image diluting with water and blending the colours as I added them. I kept it fairly soft then used more intense colour to highlight a few of the flowers. I chose hot pink to frame the panel and stamp the sentiment which co-ordinated with the brightest areas on the watercoloured panel. I ended up offsetting the panel from the frame, a technique I’ve seen others do successfully, and I quite like it. I noticed as I played with the positioning that it worked best when the pink mat was centred and the painted panel offset not the other way round.
Supplies:
Stamps: Sweetheart, Forever & Always (PB)
Cardstock: hot pressed watercolour paper, hot pink cardstock
Ink: versafine
Paint: Peerless transparent watercolors
Also: WOW clear embossing powder
Flower Gala
Posted: February 19, 2016 Filed under: Flower Gala, Uncategorized | Tags: CAS, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress stains, Tsukineko Versafine inks 19 Comments
The daffodils above and the tulips below make up the pretty new ‘Flower Gala’ cling set from Penny Black. I kept my layouts simple positioning each stamp to neatly frame a sentiment. The sentiments are new too, one from each of the new sentiment sets in the ‘So Special‘ release. (listed below). I stamped both the flower stamps in vintage photo distress ink then painted the interior with distress stains which blended with the vintage photo ink for an aged effect
The ‘So Special’ reveal continues on the PB blog this week as the transparent stamps are featured and you still have a chance to win a shopping spree until Feb 28th.
Supplies:
Stamps: Sentiment Collection, Special Thoughts, Flower Gala (PB)
Inks: Vintage photo ink, Scattered Straw, Spiced Marmalade, Seedless Preserves, Peeled Paint, Abandoned Coral, Worn Lipstick, Forest Moss distress stains (Ranger) Vintage Sepia (Tsukineko)
Cardstock: Fabriano 100% cotton hot pressed watercolour paper, brown cardstock
Autumn Dance
Posted: September 10, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks, Ranger Distress stains 7 Comments
The Fall 2014 reveal and giveaway continues on the Penny Black blog this week. The image above was created using one of the new Autumn stamps, a large whimsical array of leaves. I used watercolour paper and stamped the image twice, once in wild honey and again in frayed burlap distress inks . I then used wild honey, spiced marmalade, barn door, frayed burlap and dried marigold to paint inside the leaves and over the outlines. Using a waterbrush I blended the colour from the dots and lines into the background filling the spaces with pale yellow and olive tones. After finishing my colouring I restamped the outline image in vintage photo distress ink. Finally I added some gold pearl ex mixed with water over the top of a few leaves. You can’t see it in the photo above but on the actual card it adds a gold shimmer.
The whole image has a wavy border with leaves and swirls cutting through it here and there but I just kept the border at the top of my panel and trimmed the other three sides. I sliced the panel into three even sections and popped them up on dimensional squares. I knew I had a nice long sentiment for the narrow space but I had to hunt it out. It’s from the “…wishing you” set.
Supplies
Stamps: Autumn Dance, …wishing you (PB)
Inks: Mustard Seed, Barn Door, Spiced Marmalade, Vintage Photo distress stains & Wild Honey, Antique Linen(Ranger)
Cardstock: Neenah Natural White 110lb, Fabriano 100% cotton hot pressed watercolour paper
Also: 3D Foam squares (Scrapbook Adhesives)
Heather Telford 