Grateful for all you’ve done

Posted: October 1, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: grateful for everything | Tags: , , | 8 Comments

Thank you to all who joined in last week and shared what they are thankful for. It was a privilege to read your comments and to know so many of you are grateful for family, friends, our faithful God, health, safety and the joy of this hobby we share. The Foiled Fox and I are leaving the comments open on our posts from last week so you can still share what you are thankful for and be entered in the giveaway.

I posted a card made with this stamp a week or so back but have quite a different look on today’s card. The stamp is flipped around and stamped in versafine clair nocturne on hot pressed watercolour paper. I painted with brusho paints and used only three colours: rose red, gamboge and olive green. The brown leaf is a mix of olive green and rose red. The blue background is painted with stormy sky distress stain.

I matted the panel in navy and attached it to a white card base.

Supplies

Stamps: grateful for everything, kindhearted (C&9th)
 
Inks: versafine clair nocturne & stormy sky distress stain
 
Paint: brusho rose red, gamboge, olive green

Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, navy cardstock, neenah natural white
 

Autumn Sprigs

Posted: September 28, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Xmas sprigs | Tags: , , | 23 Comments

Our gratitude week continues both here and on the Foiled Fox blog. Next week we will return to our regularly scheduled programming but the gratitude themed posts will stay open for comments until the end of Friday October 5th. The Foiled Fox is giving away a $25 gift certificate to three of our readers who leave a comment here on my blog and/or on the Foiled Fox blog telling us something they are grateful for. It does not have to be related to art and craft at all. We will randomly choose a winner from each gratitude post and announce them on Tuesday, October 9th. Now before I move on to the card details I will add that I am very thankful for the people I have met through art and card making, those of you I know through this blog as well as those I have met in person at classes or crops. It is a great community that I love being involved in.

To create today’s gratitude themed card I used a Penny Black Christmas set. The only part of the set that is particularly Christmassy is the bauble hanging on one of the branches. I left that stamp out and used the other two that feature only leaves and berries. I used autumn tones too, three Catherine Pooler inks: spruce, bellini, shea butter. I started by inking the larger of the two stamps in shea butter ink then dabbed some spruce and bellini here and there on the leaves and berries. I spritzed the stamp with water then stamped on hot pressed watercolour paper. The inks had begun to blend after spritzing; I blended them more on the paper with a paintbrush. While there was still ink on the stamp I spritzed it and stamped again resulting in a paler image. I blended the pale leaves and berries with a brush too. I repeated the process with the large stamp then did the same thing with the small stamp and ended up filling 75% of the panel. You could leave the blending step out, I just like to get the look of painted leaves.

I did a little splatter in both spruce and bellini then moved on to the sentiment. To make sure my die cut sentiment and accent strips matched exactly I swiped the spruce inkpad onto some watercolour paper then let it dry. The CP inks are very juicy and gave great coverage. I added double sided adhesive to the back of the spruce coloured watercolour paper then die cut the word ‘thankful’ twice. The die is ‘thankful heart’ combined but I did a little surgery and removed the heart. I layered the two die cuts then worked out where I would put them on my leaf panel. There was an area where the ink and water had splodged so that was the perfect area to cover up with a sentiment. As I was using some stamped words right up next to the die-cut words I did the stamping first in my positioner so I wouldn’t have to try stamping around die-cuts already stuck down! I wonder how I knew to do that?! The stamped words are half a phrase from the very useful ‘happy snippets’ set.

I cut a very narrow strip of spruce inked paper with my paper trimmer (linked below) and used a dot adhesive to attach two pieces to the top of the panel. I know ribbon or twine might have looked nice but my matchy-matchy heart wanted spruce green so inked paper was the way to go. I trimmed the panel to match the card front exactly, which seems to be my preference currently and now I have another card to send to someone I am thankful for.

 

Supplies

Stamps: Christmas sprig, happy snippets (PB)

Die: thankful heart (PB)

Inks: spruce, shea butter, bellini (Catherine Pooler)


Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper

Also: glass mat, paper trimmer, stamp positioner, double sided adhesive sheets, dot adhesive
  

You made my day

Posted: September 26, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: fluttering friends | Tags: , , | 33 Comments

You absolutely made my day on Monday by sharing what you are thankful for. I was so encouraged reading your comments. I hope you are still counting your blessings because the Foiled Fox and I are continuing our gratitude week and giveaways with a couple more cards today. You can enter on each of the posts this week for more chances to win; just tell us something different that you are thankful for on each day. The Foiled Fox is giving away a $25 gift certificate to three of our readers who leave a comment here on my blog and/or on the Foiled Fox blog telling us something they are grateful for. It does not have to be related to art and craft at all.  You have until the end of Friday, October 5th to add a comment to any of this week’s gratitude posts. We will randomly choose a winner from each gratitude post and announce them on Tuesday, October 9th.

These sweet dragonflies and butterfly are from My Favorite Things; it’s a set called Fluttering Friends. I like the fact that there are more dragonflies than butterflies in this collection; often it is the other way round. For this first card I embossed the dragonflies on vellum in platinum embossing powder then cut them out using the co-ordinating die set. I painted a rough square on hot pressed watercolour paper with Peerless transparent watercolours. I love these watercolours; the colours are vibrant and the blending is beautiful. I then die-cut a square from the panel and from some adhesive backed foam and popped up my square as a platform for the dragonflies. I even remembered my nuvo drops and made some clear droplets beside the dragon flies, then finished the card with a sentiment from the MFT ‘all about you’ set.

I kept my colours similar for the second card but featured painted dragonflies and butterfly instead of a painted background. Once again I used peerless paints, blending oranges, yellows and pinks.

The embossing is all in platinum powder and the sentiment this time is from ‘brushstroke expressions’ popped up over a ‘typewriter text’ background.

I’ll wrap up this post by telling you another thing I am thankful for, and it is something many of you mentioned on Monday, my dear family both near and far. I have a wonderful family, four of them here in Canada and all the rest on the other side of the world in Australia.

Thanks for dropping in today; I hope you are having a delightful day!

Supplies

Stamps: fluttering friends, typewriter text, brushstroke expressions, all about you (MFT)
   
Dies: fluttering friends (MFT)

Inks: versamark, versafine clair tulip red

Paint: Peerless Transparent watercolours

Paper: hot pressed watercolour, light weight vellum, neenah cream

Also: platinum embossing powder, nuvo morning dew drops, white adhesive backed foam
 

Thankful for you

Posted: September 24, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: thankful leaves turnabout | Tags: , | 39 Comments

I have joined forces with the Foiled Fox this week to celebrate gratitude. We have so much to be grateful for we thought it would be fun to share some of those thoughts in the blog posts and comments.

I have gratitude themed cards for you this week and the Foiled Fox is giving away a $25 gift certificate to three of our readers who leave a comment here on my blog and/or on the Foiled Fox blog telling us something they are grateful for. It does not have to be related to art and craft at all.  You have until the end of Friday, October 5th to add a comment to any of this week’s gratitude posts. We will randomly choose a winner from each gratitude post and announce them on Tuesday, October 9th.

I am thankful for the beauty around me. My blog posts often reflect the natural world I see outside. I love to include flowers, trees and scenery including those crisp snowy scenes I stamp and paint in the colder months. Today’s card is in anticipation of all the colourful  leaves I will enjoy in the months to come. They are beginning to turn now but it goes on for weeks and there is quite the range of colours from all the trees in my yard. I don’t generally get pink leaves though, so you are going to have accept some artistic licence on today’s colour choices. This card was created using the Concord & 9th ‘thankful leaves turnabout stamp set’. The set includes a large stamp designed in such a way that you stamp it once on a 6″x6″ panel, rotate it 90°, stamp again and repeat until it has been stamped four times. The end result is a panel filled with leaves but with just enough overlap to look attractive not crowded. If you don’t want a 6″x6″ finished panel you can trim it down or just attach your smaller panel to a 6″x6″ piece of scrap cardstock for stamping and rotate the whole thing.

You can read my whole process for this card over on the Foiled Fox blog and enter the giveaway by leaving a comment here or there telling us one thing you are thankful for. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Supplies

Stamps: thankful leaves turnabout stamps

Inks: Victorian velvet, dried marigold, rusty hinge, gathered twigs, versamark
    
Paper: hot pressed watercolour, neenah natural white, pink cardstock
 
Tools: cutterpillar glass mat, misti stamping positioner
 
Also: rose gold embossing powder
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Grateful for everything

Posted: September 21, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: grateful for everything | Tags: , | 9 Comments

This gratitude themed card heralds the beginning of a gratitude focus on my blog for the coming week. Starting next Monday I will be collaborating with the Foiled Fox crew to celebrate gratitude. Before I dive into that collaboration though I thought I would share this card and issue an invitation to you, my wonderful readers. I am very thankful for those of you who pop in to see what I have been creating. Some of you have been visiting for years, others are new around here; some of you leave me a little encouragement from time to time in the comments section and others contact me with questions and feedback; I love hearing from you.

With gratitude as my focus over the next week and in fact next two weeks leading up to our Canadian Thanksgiving, I thought I would send out some cards to you, my readers. Thing is though, I’ll need to you supply an address if you would like to receive a card in the mail. Please don’t leave your address in the comment section, instead use the Contact Me button at the top of the page.

This lovely spray of flowers is from Concord & 9th; I have embossed it on hot pressed watercolour paper with clear powder. The bold colour is from Dr Ph Martin’s Hydrus inks. They are liquid watercolour inks and are very saturated. You don’t need much ink to get wonderful depth of colour; a little goes a long way and they mix beautifully to create new colours. I only used four colours to paint this panel but with a little mixing or diluting I was able to create an olive green and a pale green, a  yellow and a couple of oranges as well as use the brown and red straight from the bottle.

To create a strip of co-ordinating plaid paper I used the plaid background stamped in memento dandelion ink for the yellow then added green and red ruled lines with distress markers. To divide the busy plaid strip from the busy floral panel I added a very thin strip of red cardstock.  As usual I switched to versafine ink for the sentiment because it stamps fine lines so well. Isn’t that a sweet and thoughtful sentiment? I’m looking forward to sending it out to friends; maybe it will end up in your mail box.

See you next week for more gratitudinal fun! (is that a real word?)

Supplies

Stamps: grateful for everything, plaid background (C & 9)
 
Inks: versamark, versafine vintage sepia, dandelion memento ink & candied apple distress marker, peeled paint distress marker
  
Paint: Dr Ph Martins deep red rose, phthalo green, gamboge, Venetian brown
 
Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, neenah cream, red cardstock
 
Also: T-ruler, glass mat, clear embossing powder, cutterpillar paper trimmer
  

Many Mandalas

Posted: September 19, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: many mandalas | Tags: , | 8 Comments

To be honest, I originally chose the ‘many mandalas’ stamp set for the range of sentiments rather than the mandalas. After taking a closer look I got inspired to stamp with the intricate circular designs and had a happy time creating a panel which I now want to turn into fabric! The stamps in this set are made of very fine lines so you can make very intricate designs with them. The set also has a guide for putting all the separate stamps together to make the intricate mandala you see in the centre of my card. That’s not one stamp; oh no; that is made from five separate stamps one inside another. Yes it is tricky to get them lined up (the guide helps with this) but having them as separate stamps means you can create an unending number of patterns. You can see from my card I have single or double patterns surrounding the central intricate design. Trust me; these stamps are fun.

I stamped my design in versamark but I probably should have gone for a coloured ink (duh!) as I was embossing in gunmetal powder anyway. I stamped the individual mandala circle stamps one at a time on hot pressed watercolour paper and embossed after each stamping. If I had used a coloured pigment ink to see where I had stamped I probably could have stamped several before stopping to emboss with the gunmetal powder. After I’d done all my embossing I sprinkled tangerine, violet and fuchsia colorburst powders over the panel and spritzed with water. I try not to sprinkle too much the first time so I can see where each colour has fallen and then decide if I want to feature a colour in a particular place. You can see from the close up that I did concentrate some areas as violet, some as tangerine and others as a blend. To keep a section as one colour I started moving and adding colour with a paintbrush instead of sprinkling it from the bottle. I used my glass mat as a palette and mixed some of each colour on the mat so I could then paint it into sections on the panel. Once all the painting was done I dried the panel and painted diamond glaze over several of the mandalas. You can probably see a reflective shine on parts of the top two photos, that’s the glaze.

To complete the card I decided to slice the panel into three pieces and pop them up on foam on a white card base. I stamped the sentiment on white too in some versafine clair glamorous ink. Now if there was a way to turn this small panel into a nice big piece of fabric I think I would be making myself something to wear.

Supplies

Stamps: many mandalas (C&9th)

Inks: versamark, glamorous versafine clair
 
Paint: violet, tangerine, fuchsia colorburst powders
  
Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, neenah solar white
 
Also: gunmetal embossing powder, glossy accents

Painting with painted prints

Posted: September 18, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: painted prints | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

When I was working with the painted prints set a few weeks back I kept experimenting and came up with a process that uses only one of the stamps in each co-ordinated set of 2 or 3 layered stamps. The stamps are designed to work in 2’s or 3’s; you usually stamp the larger stamp first then the smaller ones over the top.

Instead for these cards I worked with the second stamp of each layering combo. I stamped in distress ink and used a brush and water to blend the stamping into a fuller shape. This gave me light and darker shading on each flower. I stamped and restamped the leaves and stems to get dark, medium and light green tones. A little spritz of water over the leaves made the colour bleed into the paper a bit more then I finished it off with some green splatter. The inks used in the card above were worn lipstick, aged mahogany, forest moss and shabby shutters.

This second rose card I completed the same way but didn’t fling quite so much water around. The inks were tea dye for the stamping of the rose (the second layer stamp) and abandoned coral for blending over the top. Once again the leaves and stems were forest moss and shabby shutters. To make it just that little bit fancier I matted with a dark gold cardstock and embossed the sentiment with gold powder.

The technique described here is the one I used for the tulips in the previous post. Layering stamps are very clever but I am happy to also have worked out a loose looking un-layered technique to try with them; you know I like blending everything with water!

Supplies

Stamps: painted prints, fluttering friends (MFT)

Inks: worn lipstick, aged mahogany, shabby shutters, forest moss, mowed lawn, tea dye, abandoned coral, versamark
  
Paper: cold pressed watercolour paper, shimmer antique gold cardstock, pale green cardstock, burgandy cardstock,
 
Also: metallic gold rich embossing powder

Painted tulips

Posted: September 15, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: painted prints | Tags: , | 8 Comments

My Favorite Things is having a competition to find some Card Design Superstars so I thought I would throw a card into the ring. This one is created with stamps from the ‘Painted Prints’ stamp set. I have another post coming on Monday which explains my process using the rose stamps from the same set. I pulled this card out of that post so I could enter it in the ‘Clean & Simple’ category of the competition.

I used distress inks for all the flowers, leaves and stems then switched to versafine for the delightful sentiment from the ‘All About You’ set.

Supplies

Stamps: painted prints, all about you (MFT)

Inks: dusty concord, milled lavender, forest moss, mowed lawn, abandoned coral, picked raspberry distress inks, shady lane versafine clair
    
Paper: cold pressed watercolour paper, olive green cardstock

Christmas berries

Posted: September 14, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Christmas berries | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

I’m hanging out on the Foiled Fox blog today, one of my favourite places to be. They have a bunch of lovely new stamps & dies from Penny Black; if you haven’t had a chance to browse their new arrivals, you really should. Christmas berries is one of the new rubber cling stamps and I have filled out my panel with extra branches from a handy set called ‘winter branches‘.

I used a stamp positioner so I could work on berries separately from leaves and twigs. I stamped the berries in ‘festive berries’ ink (imagine that) and blended on the paper with a paint brush. I let the ink dry before painting some ‘aged mahogany’ onto the shadowed areas of the berries.

I inked the leaves with pine needles distress ink at one end and peeled paint at the other. After stamping I blended the two colours together with a damp brush. I stamped all the branch and twiggy bits with ground espresso distress ink which is a nice dark brown and used the same colour to paint details onto the berries. I used the ‘Winter Branches’ stamps to fill out the design but first I stamped the Christmas berries stamp on post-it notes so I could cut some masks to cover the berries while I stamped the branches over the top in the ground espresso ink.

I switched to versafine vintage sepia ink for the sentiment because it prints fine detail so well. To make the colour closer to the depth of ground espresso I just stamped several times in the stamp positioner.

Supplies

Stamps: Christmas berries 40-626(PB), winter branches 40-637, Joyful wishes 30-434
 
Inks: pine needles, peeled paint, festive berries, aged mahogany, ground espresso distress inks & vintage sepia versafine ink
     
Paper: hot pressed watercolour

Also: stamping platform

Peaceful

Posted: September 12, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: peaceful | Tags: , , | 8 Comments

This simple card utilises only two stamps and three inks but I think it manages to convey an impression of a big winter sky. I splattered masking fluid on hot pressed watercolour paper then, after it had dried I sprayed water, stormy sky and forest moss stains over the panel. I did it fairly randomly but tilted the paper to keep one corner pale while the rest of the panel filled with colour.

When the sky was partially dry I stamped the trees with forest moss distress ink. With the trees in place I added more drops of stormy sky stain and scattered straw stain while tilting the panel upside down to make the colours bleed up into the sky like the northern lights. I blended forest moss stain into the stamped trees then let the panel dry before removing the masking fluid.

I trimmed the panel to cover the whole card front and added a sentiment from the PB ‘Christmas and love’ set. I had forgotten how much I like the look of masking fluid splatter. I use it more as snow in wintry scenes than anything else but it adds a little something to other designs also. Now I want to go and splatter masking fluid on all my watercolour paper…

Supplies

Stamps: peaceful 30-511(PB), Christmas and love 30-508(PB)

Inks: forest moss distress stain, stormy sky distress stain, scattered straw distress stain olympia green versafine
     
Paper: hot pressed watercolour

Also: masking fluid

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