Farm Fresh floral

Posted: March 23, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: farm fresh, letter background, Penny Black | Tags: | 4 Comments

I’m having ‘fun with the Foiled Fox‘ today so I am chatting about this card over on their blog too! I posted a card the other day featuring two sweet jugs of lavender. The jugs were two separate stamps from the new PB ‘farm fresh’ set; this is the third and largest stamp from the set. I’m not sure what kind of flowers they are but that never really stops me from inking the stamp with whatever colours I choose.

I worked in the stamp positioner on cold press watercolour paper for a little texture. Starting with the jug I inked it with chipped sapphire and bundled sage distress inks. After stamping I inked the flowers with wild honey and rusty hinge inks, spritzed the stamp with water then stamped a slightly blurred and blended impression. The leaves and stems are stamped in rustic wilderness ink which is such a lovely green; it is giving forest moss some competition as my favourite green distress ink. To add a little definition to the flower centres I drew some black dots.

I stamped the jug of flowers on a post-it note and cut it out so I could mask the whole image while working on the background. I also masked across the panel so I could blend wild honey ink to represent a table or shelf and chipped sapphire ink with the ‘letter background’ stamp to represent the wall. To finish off I added a tiny bow to the jug. Make sure you visit the Foiled Fox blog and online store to see all the beauty and goodies they are sharing over there.

In other news I am teaching the second episode of Art Journal Adventure on Saturday March 26, Friday April 1 and Saturday April 2. There are a few spaces left if you’d like to join me at Crop A While, here in Ottawa. Each ‘episode’ is a stand alone workshop so there is no problem jumping into episode 2! Last month our journal page was a wintry scene; this time we are using watercolour techniques to go all green and leafy! For more information or to register visit the Crop A While website.

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Irises

Posted: March 21, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Brusho, how sweet, iris elegance, Penny Black | Tags: , , , | 8 Comments

The new ‘iris elegance’ stamp from Penny Black is a delight to work with. The design is large so there is plenty of space in the petals for pretty watercolour blends. I inked the stamp with distress inks then blended the stamped ink with water to fill the flowers using some co-ordinating colours of brusho for extra depth and variation. I have been flipping back and forth between hot and cold pressed watercolour paper lately; this one is hot pressed.

I have purple irises that come up in my garden each year but they don’t have the yellow centres I’ve featured on these ones. Yellow tends to be a pigment that pushes other pigments away which worked well on the petals. I painted the purples and then while the paint was still wet added yellow paint which spread and pushed the purple without making too much brown.

I don’t always add background but I did this time by painting water around the flowers then adding some Payne’s grey paint and a little diluted purple. Once again I chose the sweet little birthday stamp from the new ‘how sweet’ stamp set. Speaking of backgrounds, thank you so much to everyone who left me a message saying nothing more was needed on the recent poppy card. I am so encouraged by you, my kind and generous readers!

The warm weather and rain of the last few days has melted quite a lot of snow and now I see some green tips emerging. I have also spied a cardinal and a blue jay on the feeder. Spring is definitely in the air.

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Distinctive

Posted: March 18, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: distinctive, how sweet, Penny Black | Tags: , | 8 Comments

I consider lupins one of my garden successes. It may be a stretch for me to take credit because they were here when we moved in and they are not gone yet so I feel like my part in the success has been just not killing them all! They start blooming not too long after the bulbs and I have them in white, purple, pink, purple/white and dark purple. Last year I took care to chop off all the dead heads and I still had some blooming in August! Some of the plants became aphid hotels so please let me know if you have a fix for that which doesn’t involve me picking them all off by hand!

The new lupin stamp from Penny Black is called ‘distinctive’ and it has two flower heads on one stem. I used shaded lilac, chipped sapphire and seedless preserves to ink the stamp so I could create lupins that are a close match to the ones that appear in my garden. The leaves and stems were inked with mowed lawn, forest moss and peeled paint distress inks. You can see in the close up that I have a mix of blended and unblended sections on the card. I used the misti, spritzed the stamp after inking and also did a bit of blending with a paintbrush after stamping. I think the mix of textures add to the appeal and adding some water helps the ink spread on the hot pressed watercolour paper.

The birthday sentiment is from the new PB set, ‘how sweet’. There are three little sentiments in the set along with a floral stamp. Oh, and of course there is splatter, but you probably noticed that already!

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Brilliant

Posted: March 16, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: brilliant, Peerless watercolours, Penny Black, vintage touch | Tags: , , , | 18 Comments

It seems that Penny Black always includes a poppy or two in a spring release. This large stamp is called ‘brilliant’ and I think the mix of flowers, leaves and seed heads is just lovely. I chose to do no-line watercolour with soft stone ink and peerless paints.

I stamped the large image in Papertrey Ink ‘soft stone’ then worked with rose red, mountain green, golden yellow and warm sepia peerless paints. If you haven’t heard of Peerless Watercolour paints take a look at the video I made about them a few years back.

I wondered about adding background pattern or blended ink but left it clean except for the simple ‘vintage touch’ die-cut. The vintage touch set has two fancy banners as well as two dies that cut negative space banner patterns. I finished off the centre of the poppy with a black marker.

I am still undecided about the lack of background and sentiment; what do you think?

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Farm Fresh Lavender

Posted: March 15, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Background Stamps, Brick wall, Brusho, farm fresh, Penny Black | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

I am hoping I can fill a couple of jugs with lavender this summer. A couple of years back a friend split her lavender and gave me two plants which were coming along well last year and I hope will be even stronger and more full this year. When I have flowers in the garden I am always torn when deciding whether to cut them and bring some inside or just enjoy them outside where they will probably last longer.

To create this little scene I used two stamps from the new Penny Black ‘farm fresh’ set and the ‘brick wall’ background stamp. I worked in a stamp positioner to create this panel. I stamped the jugs first with wild honey and tea dye distress inks. After blending the ink with water I added shadow with walnut stain ink. I used both bundled sage and rustic wilderness for the stems and a mix of milled lavender (of course) and dusty concord for the flowers.

Because I had done the jugs first I stamped and cut little masks from post-it notes to make it easier to stamp a brick wall behind them. I used tea dye to stamp the brick wall then started blending the tea dye ink to fill the bricks. I sprinkled a very small amount of sandstone brusho over the wall and started blending it in random bricks. This resulted in the warm orange bricks you see. I also added walnut stain ink to a few bricks for a darker look.

I blended antique linen and walnut ink in the foreground and painted pale shadows below the jugs. The card is finished with a sentiment from the new PB ‘love big’ stamp set.

Just in case you wondered at me thinking about cutting flowers from my garden, I’m just dreaming; it is definitely still covered in snow!

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1 Bike + 3 Oxide Inks

Posted: March 11, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Simply Graphic, spring bike | Tags: , | 4 Comments

I am over on the Foiled Fox blog today with these sweet new stamps from Simply Graphic. The Foiled Fox has just brought in a lovely selection of cool stamps and dies from Simply Graphic and they shared a video on Wednesday introducing them all.

I went simple and graphic with my first two card layouts by blending oxide inks in stripes on both white and kraft cardstock. I stamped the ‘Spring Bike’ stamp in versafine clair nocturne above and embossed with Brutus Monroe alabaster powder below. I love how the white pops on kraft.

I thought I had finished after these two cards but the three oxide inks, rusty hinge, picked raspberry and salty ocean all wanted me to try a watercolour technique. I embossed the bike in clear powder on watercolour paper then smooshed the inks on my glass mat, spritzed with water, then swiped some watercolour paper through the inks several times to fill it with colour.

You can see I did get some grey and brown in the mix but I thought it worked well to define the bike and suggest some ground behind. When I saw how it looked on half the tire I mixed some more and painted the whole tire. I also filled the basket with blue but other than that the inks landed where they landed!

I finished all the cards with sentiments from the ‘English sentiments’ set. What sweet simple stamps these are. Make sure you visit the Foiled Fox to see the rest of their Simply Graphic selection.

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2022 BuJo – March theme

Posted: March 10, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Dingbat notebooks, Hand drawn, Hand lettered | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Yes we are a third of the way through March but better late than never. I live in the north where March rarely means spring flowers; more often it means spring snow so my theme is still wintery!

I actually left my home and went away last weekend to the mountains and did a little skiing and relaxing so this theme seemed appropriate. Our accommodation looked nothing like my hand drawn cabin but was lovely just the same.

The trees on these pages were stamped with a Simply Graphic stamp, ‘pine forest‘ in rustic wilderness and iced spruce inks.

Simply Graphic is a French company with some very cool stamp and die designs. The Foiled Fox just started carrying more of their product and sent me a few stamps to try out. You will see more in tomorrow’s post.

I used post-its to mask, drew my own cabin with Staedtler markers then lightly watercoloured it with distress inks.

I made many mistakes on these pages because I was rushing but I managed to cover them up or work around them!

If you haven’t seen one of my bullet journal spreads before I am working in a ‘Dingbats’ notebook; it’s A5 and dotted and I think the quality is excellent.

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Birches on Kraft

Posted: March 9, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Alexandra Renke, Art Journal | Tags: , | 10 Comments

These two pages began as ‘clean up’ pages after completing pages in another art journal. I had some pink and brown paints left over and also some blue with brown. I used an old key card to lift the excess paint and swiped it onto the pages in my 6×6 kraft journal.

I didn’t have a plan straight away but a few weeks later I pulled out an Alexandra Renke stencil which I’d never used and decided to do a couple of simple landscape pages.

The stencil exposes only the edges of the birch trees which I wanted to be black so I mixed some black gesso with some black texture paste to make it thicker then spread it through the stencil onto the painted pages. Once it dried I painted the white spaces first with white gesso but it wasn’t opaque enough so I used Dr Ph Martin’s Bleedproof white paint.

After completing the trees I painted some snow covered hills with the same white paint and diluted them with water to reveal the land underneath. This is the opposite technique to my usual watercolour technique where I paint the shadows or hills and dilute the tops.

So far I have tried distress sprays, gel pens, acrylic paints and texture paste on the kraft pages. As long as I include some light colours in my designs the brown background words really well. Next experiment? Collage, stamping or maybe coloured pencils.

Supplies

New Penny Black Florals

Posted: March 8, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: letter background, modesty, Penny Black, sweet sprouts | Tags: , , | 8 Comments

It snowed all day yesterday but spring arrived anyway in a package from Penny Black! I have a nice little stack of PB florals to share with you in the days to come and I should manage a video or two as well.

This first card features four stamps from the new Springtime release. Those of you who have been PB fans for years might notice a re-release among them. I stamped the large and small flowers from the ‘modesty’ set over foliage from the ‘sweet sprouts’ set; both sets include two large cling stamps. I used milled lavender and aged mahogany distress inks for the flowers and a mix of three distress greens for the leaves and stems. All the supplies are linked below.

The washy blended look in the petals was achieved by spritzing the stamp before stamping along with some paint brush blending afterwards. I stamped a border of script in weathered wood with the ‘letter background stamp’ and blended the same ink around the edges. I splattered water for some watermarks and a mix of the milled lavender and aged mahogany around the flowers.

The card is 6¼”x 4½” on cold pressed watercolour paper finished with a sentiment from the new ‘love big’ set. I love the snowy cards as you are aware but I am definitely excited to be stamping florals again!

Supplies

Blue flowers on red gel print

Posted: March 2, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: gel press, harmonious, Penny Black, Tim Holtz, wild flowers #1 | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

Here is another of my gel prints from last week. When I sit down to write my process for you I get a little confused as to the order I did things. With gel printing you need to do the top layer of the final print first on the plate then layer the background over the top. I don’t list the paints I use for my prints because I end up with many paints over my work surface during a printing session of several different brands. If you are wondering about paints for gel printing, use any acrylics you have and see what you like best.

I imagine I brayered blue paint on the plate first, then pressed the fiddly flower die cuts into the paint, took a print to remove all but the outlines of blue then brayered the orange and red over that. I added texture to the red layer and took the final print, I think. The grid print you see was made by pressing a textured piece of cardstock into the paint on the gel plate. I guess I need to video my process for myself as well as to share with you!

The blue prints were not as distinct as I had hoped; I’ll keep working on that. I do like the shadow flowers though and when I found an outline flower die from Penny Black I stacked two blue layers and added it over the shadows. I like its grunginess, bold colours, shadow flowers and grid texture. And those two odd white dots were made as old paint peeled off the plate. Gel printing is full of delightful surprises.

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