The Washing Line
Posted: April 10, 2024 Filed under: City stacks, Concord & 9th, Echidna Studios, gel press, washing line | Tags: Concord & 9th, Echidna Studios, gel press, gel printing 2 Comments
I’m not sure that this is strictly collage although it is all made from cut out papers glued together. I guess it is more like paper piecing, something I rarely do. But gel printing has me looking for all sorts of ways to use my printed papers. The ‘washing line‘ is a digital stamp from Echidna Studios and cutting out all the clothes took me way back to my paper doll days. I printed the washing line image on the seven different coloured gel prints then proceeded to pick colours for all the clothes.
I looked through my gel prints; I have quite a few sorted into folders by colour. Most of the prints used for this panel were from my Gel Print Journey online class. The yellow dress was cut from a gradated print with a faint white daisy pattern on it. The pink and orange ‘tie dye’ was a print achieved my pressing cling wrap on the gel plate, the socks and top were from a blue & burgandy blended gel print. The blue background print was a patchy blue and white print where I hadn’t rolled off my brayer before rolling resulting in the big white blob of paint – just right for a cloudy blue sky. When it came to gluing everything onto the blue background I just adhered the cut-outs over the printed outline.
The digital image includes two patches of grass below the posts but I wanted more so I drew another strip of grass on a green gel print and filled the stretch under the washing line. I just happened to have the perfect sentiment from the Concord & 9 ‘City Stacks‘ stamp set. This post includes affiliate links from Foiled Fox. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you buy from Echidna Studios my daughter and I get very excited!
Floral Collage Cards
Posted: April 8, 2024 Filed under: A Pocket Full, Collage cards, Dies, Penny Black, Taylored Expressions, this way | Tags: collage, Darkroom Door stamps, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Taylored Expressions 2 Comments
The collage and ephemera cards just keep coming. Today’s cards feature old book page collage overlaid with one layer of a floral napkin. I have a few collaged ‘mini masterboards’ made so I can cut elements or backgrounds out when I need them. For the card above I picked the rusty orange from the napkin to be the accent colour.
I recently bought a notch punch so I can create file dividers of any size; in the card above I made the blank orange one a little larger to show behind the floral & collage one. I added tickets stamped and die-cut, a scrap of hessian and a cut out from an old Betty Crocker ‘Good and Easy Cook Book‘!
On the second card I used an aged book page as the background and added the paper napkin layer to the mini notebook page with some mulberry paper for framing and contrast. The little green postage stamp is real and the vintage label is stamped.
For the recent collage cards I have pulled out some supplies that I’d almost forgotten, the pretty label border stamps, the mulberry paper and the ‘office’ type dies from Penny Black are in the current rotation.
The file dividers on the card below remind me of a recipe card box which is why it ended up with the little recipe book snippet on it. The sentiment is from Taylored Expressions ‘Simple Strips – Thanks’ but I chopped it up to add to the file tabs.
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.
Greenery Collage Cards
Posted: April 3, 2024 Filed under: Collage cards, Darkroom Door, Dies, Finetec paints, gift card pocket, global postmarks, Leaves, measuring tape, Mixed Media, paris postcard, Penny Black, Tim Holtz, wild flowers #1 | Tags: collage, Darkroom Door stamps, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Mixed Media, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Tim Holtz 6 Comments
Continuing with the collage theme I have three cards featuring greenery from a paper napkin. I know people have been creating with paper napkins for years but I am new to the game. I have a small collection of pretty paper napkins to use on cards, book covers and journal pages. The green ones featured here are large dinner napkins found at Winners, probably in that tempting ‘just before the checkout’ area!
I glued the printed layer of the napkin over book pages to make my main panels and aged the edges with green and brown inks. I created a couple of little vintage postcards with the Paris postcard stamp, a background with the Measuring Tape stamp, sentiments and postmarks all from Darkroom Door.
Once again I used some cute dies from Penny Black to cut tickets, file divider, tag and leaves adding blending around the edges for the vintage look.
The scrap of cheesecloth, the lace and the grosgrain ribbon were all found around here, maybe the ribbon is actually vintage; it looks a bit discoloured from age which meant it co-ordinated well.
The lovely Queen Anne’s lace die is from the Tim Holtz ‘wildflowers #1 set.
I did make my own little postage stamps for the postcards because I’m still in love with faux postage. These ones had to be quite small so I didn’t use a die I just punched tiny holes with a needle to perforate the edges. You can see a bit of splatter here and there with ivory paint and there are touches of gold watercolour paint on the petals of a few flowers too!
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.
Vintage Collage Cards
Posted: April 1, 2024 Filed under: Collage cards, Darkroom Door, Dies, gift card pocket, handwritten ledger, Mixed Media, number medley, Penny Black, Tagged | Tags: Darkroom Door stamps, Mixed Media, Penny Black creative dies, Ranger archival inks 6 Comments
I’ve recently fallen down an vintage ephemera rabbit hole and emerged to make some of my own backgrounds and elements. There are companies that make beautiful co-ordinating ephemera, papers, chipboard pieces, etc. but I am committed to ‘using what I have’ so I’m pulling from old books, calendars, greeting cards, sewing patterns and scrapbooking paper along with a few handy tools.
I’m not going to list every die, ink or paper but I will mention some of my favourite resources. The old books that I am removing pages from include music books, dictionaries, atlases, novels, poetry and recipe books. I also have some lovely papers and vintage pages that friends have given me, so it is fun putting them to use.
The inks I reach for are the distress brown tones from Ranger, not always the dye inks, but often the archival inks as they don’t dilute or smudge when I add glue or stamp on glossy paper.
I have a bunch of background stamps and sets from Darkroom Door which give me vintage style text, patterns and elements including but not limited to the ‘handwritten ledger‘ and ‘number medley‘.
I found amongst my Penny Black dies a file folder, notebook page, several tags, tickets, pockets and decorative borders. I also treated myself to a corner rounding punch that punches in three different sizes and of course the postage stamp die set I’ve featured a few times recently.
I pulled out twine, ribbon and lace for finishing touches and some vintage butterfly cut-outs that were all joined together by little tabs. I have had them for years ever since I inherited my mother’s teaching resources. You can seem them in the close up below.
Now just in case you are worried, I am not ripping pages out of beloved old books, but I am putting to use some books I inherited and don’t have a personal attachment to. Anne, Heidi, Jo March, Jane, Ratty and Mole are all safe! Old calendars, diaries, magazines and greeting cards are fair game because honestly, I’ve held onto some of them for a very long time. 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.
By the Garden Gate
Posted: March 28, 2024 Filed under: Echidna Studios, garden fence, Inktense pencils, Stampin Up | Tags: digital stamps, Echidna Studios, Inktense, Kuretake Zig clean color real brush markers, Stampin Up 5 Comments
The Garden Fence set is an Echidna Studios digital stamp set that I designed and my daughter digitised. The set includes a gate, three pots and a grass & flowers image. Each image is stackable which means you can arrange your own garden design with pots and gate beside each other, behind each other or even on top of each other if that sounds fun!
Both the gate scene above and the individual pots on the tag shown later in this post were printed on hot press watercolour paper on an ink jet printer. In the past I have always printed on a laser printer but my daughter recently bought a second hand printer to test some colour printing of our designs. We printed some black outline images to see how they were to watercolour.
The gate design above I coloured with inktense watercolour pencils and blended the ink with water and a very fine brush. The ink from the printer did bleed a bit so you can some some grey tones here and there. Because I used very little water I was able to keep the bleeding to a minimum. I received the lovely ‘exposed brick‘ embossing folder for my birthday from a couple of friends who know just what I like. It seemed an appropriate background for the slightly aged garden gate.
On this little tag I used a mix of inktense pencils and Zig clean color real brush markers; again there was some bleeding when I added water but no so much as to make me stop colouring and blending. All that to say if you have an ink jet printer it might be worth printing and watercolouring some images just to see how it goes.
I’ve been making some vintage style collage cards lately (I’ll share them on the blog soon) so I decided to find a book page as background for my watercoloured tag. I blended vintage photo and antique linen inks around the background and tag and added some typewriter alphabet stamping on both. Unfortunately I stamped the alphabet upside down on my background but I continued with my card anyway! I like the pairing of old fashioned conservatory with modern little pots just for fun.
I’ve featured the Garden Fence set before; take a look here and here. 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.
Blue Birthday
Posted: March 26, 2024 Filed under: banner blooms, banner blooms cut out dies, Dies, exquisite envelope, online class, Penny Black | Tags: online class, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks 6 Comments
Blue is my favourite colour and the different hues seen on this card are examples of why it appeals to me so much. I tend to prefer the blues that are a little bit purply but I like the teal blues as well.
All the blues on the card are made from one ink, chipped sapphire distress ink. If you watercolour with your dye inks you have probably noticed that some inks separate into different hues when diluted. I thought I would share this card today because it features in one of the lessons in my Colour Clues online course. Colour Clues is a card making course which covers colour blending, contrast, separation and mixing. I created a 40% discount for all my online courses back on February 29, mentioned it in a blog post then forgot about it! That’s why I’ve been featuring it more this week. The discount code LEAPYEAR40 is active until the end of March 28 which is now two days away.
I chose the Penny Black sets Banner Blooms and Exquisite Envelope for this card because there were plenty of enclosed petals and leaves to trap colour. Banner Blooms just happens to have a co-ordinating die set which sped up the layering of blooms and leaves. This post includes affiliate links from Foiled Fox . If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Do you have a favourite colour. Does it turn up often in your crafting or perhaps in your wardrobe? I definitely wear a lot of blue!
Gel Printed Pods
Posted: March 25, 2024 Filed under: artsy stems, framed fern, gel press, Lavinia, online class, Penny Black, Tim Holtz | Tags: gel press, gel printing, Lavinia, online class, Penny Black creative dies, Tim Holtz 3 Comments
It’s been a while since I gel printed but that there is no lack of gel prints to show you. I currently have boxes of prints and and a stash of cards made from prints.
These two cards were made from the same stencil print, one of the examples from my Gel Print Journey online class (which is on sale along with all my online classes until March 29; just use the code LEAPYEAR40 at checkout)
If you are a fan of Lavinia stencils like I am you probably recognise the ‘Pods’ stencil used for this print. I printed on a 6″x 6″ gel plate giving me a print big enough for two cards. It’s hard to see in the photo but some of the paint was metallic so the print has some shimmer and shine on it.
I looked through my botanical dies and gold cardstock in order to fine co-ordinating elements for the cards. On the card above I used the ‘framed fern’ die from Penny Black and on the card below the die featured is from Tim Holtz artsy stems die set.
I hear my gel plate calling to me so hopefully I will soon dedicate a few days to happy printing. If you are looking for a beginner gel printing class or a refresher please check out Gel Print Journey. This post includes affiliate links from Ecstasy Crafts, Foiled Fox and Scrap’n’Stamp . If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Fuchsia Favourites
Posted: March 22, 2024 Filed under: captivating, Dies, gift card pocket, online class, Penny Black | Tags: online class, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps 9 Comments
As I wait for spring I thought I would post a couple of cards I made a few years ago when filming my Floral Faves online course. I used the beautiful ‘Captivating‘ stamp from Penny Black to teach a no-line watercolour technique. All my online courses are discounted by 40% for a one more week.
Edited to add: use the code LEAPYEAR40 if the discount doesn’t appear automatically.
I used watercolour paints to colour the two cards featured today but I have also used waterbased inks smooshed onto a glass mat as they also work well for the technique. I added the tiny little tag from the PB ‘gift card pocket die set‘. It’s a set that I never use to make gift card pockets but often reach for one of the tag or label dies included.
I had fuchsias looking pretty in the planters at my front door last year. They were the opposite colouring of the ones above with pale pinky purple petals hanging down and creamy white petals at the top.
It might be time to pull out this stamp again and try it with the new pastel pencils. For more inspiration with this stamp click here and here. Today’s post features affiliate links to The Foiled Fox.
Zinnias
Posted: March 21, 2024 Filed under: Coloured pencil, Echidna Studios, pastel pencils, zinnias | Tags: canal paper, Echidna Studios, Faber Castell pastel pencils 7 Comments
As the title suggests I have zinnias to share today. This pair is just one of seven images in the new digital set, Zinnias, from Echidna Studios. There is a bunch of five blooms, the pair shown on my card and some single blooms. All the images can be layered which means you can create your own bunches or rows of zinnias for printing.
I worked on Montreal Canal Paper, a textured paper made from cotton rag. In the past I’ve used it for watercolour, this time I used my new pastel pencils. The pad of paper I used has six different colours; I chose the green as it gave me an appropriate background. The texture in the paper holds the soft pastel well. I printed the two zinnias on the paper using my laser printer.
I kept the colour scheme limited and enjoyed blending two or three colours together to get diffferent colours and tints. From the Faber Castell set of Pitt pastels I used two greens -165 &170, red -194, blue -157 and white -101. I did most of the blending by adding one colour over another but further softened the blends at the end with a burnishing pencil.
As I often do, I searched for photo inspiration before colouring and found some deep burgandy colours among the many options. I think I might plant some in my garden this spring; the new digital stamps have inspired me. Let me know if you have success with zinnias in your garden.
Scrappy Journal Challenge
Posted: March 18, 2024 Filed under: Darkroom Door, gel press, global postmarks, Handmade book | Tags: Darkroom Door stamps, gel press, gel printing, Handmade book 5 Comments
I’ve mentioned the Handmade Book Club before because I enjoy the 5 Day Challenges they offer. The most recent challenge was held last week and was called the ‘Scrappy Journal Challenge‘. The designer and teacher of the challenges, Ali Manning, came up with a tall narrow design which was very attractive. I changed the shape for mine because I will soon need a new art journal and the challenge was the perfect opportunity to get one made. The zig-zag sewing of the signatures was initially tricky but I soon got into a satisfying rhythm and finished them with only one early unpicking incident.
Other than the size of the book and the type of paper in the pages, I followed all the instruction from Ali. She is one of the best teachers I have had the privilege to learn from. I used watercolour paper for my pages and a heavy watercolour paper for the cover. I collaged the cover with vintage papers, then gel printed tissue, fabric washi tape and used postage stamps. The last details added were the gingham ribbon sewn onto the cover with a sewing machine.
The first photo in this post shows the front cover, next the full cover and spine, above is the back cover and below you can see the top view and four signatures.
After sewing the ribbon onto the cover there were random lines of stitching on the inside of the cover so I glued black mulberry paper with gold thread in it over the complete inside cover. After I’d taken the photos I decided to add gingham ribbon ties to both the front and back covers to tie the book closed.
This is the third challenge I have completed with the Handmade Book Club. Here are the links to the other books I’ve made. Mixed Media Journal, Small Coptic Journal, 7×7 Coptic Journal
Heather Telford 