Thankful for you giveaway winners

Posted: October 9, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Foiled Fox store | 3 Comments

The Foiled Fox and I are excited to announce three winners who participated in our gratitude week by telling us what they were thankful for. Each winner receives a $25 gift voucher for the Foiled Fox online store. Thank you to everyone who participated; it is great to be part of this kind, generous and thankful crafting community.

Shimmer grateful

Posted: October 8, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: grateful for everything, Shimmerz | Tags: , , | 5 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends. We celebrated both Thanksgiving and my son’s birthday last night as he will be off at the crack of dawn on the actual day to write an exam with another one the next day. Our first Thanksgiving was eighteen years ago after we had been in Canada for seven weeks. After Thanksgiving dinner with a kind and welcoming neighbour we took off for the hospital where our son was born just before midnight! We were reminiscing last night about his sisters coming into our room the next morning to see the new little brother asleep in a basket at the end of the bed! I have so many things to be thankful for including friends who have become like family to us here in Ottawa. Living so far from our family it has been a great blessing to be welcomed into the families of friends.

This subtly coloured card is embossed in silver powder and painted with shimmer paints. Most of the painting was done with Shimmerz sprays; I spritzed a bit of each colour onto my glass mat and picked it up with a paintbrush to fill the leaves and flowers. For some added depth I used bolder colours from my finetec pearlescent watercolour palette. The background is painted with colour from a grey watercolour pencil.

I was happy to find a copper shimmer cardstock in my stash that matched well with the copper highlights from the finetec palette. I matted the panel and added a die-cut sentiment also from Concord & 9th.

Make sure you pop back in tomorrow when I will announce the winners from the gratitude week giveaway I hosted with the Foiled Fox.

Supplies

Stamps: grateful for everything (C&9th)
 
Dies:

Inks: versamark

Paint: Finetec artist mica pearlescent watercolours, Shimmerz jeni b blue walkin’ a tight heliotrope, bamboo leaf, egg noggin’

   

Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, neenah natural white, copper shimmer cardstock
 
Also: silver embossing powder

Fall floral

Posted: October 5, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Brusho, radiant | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

I still have a few flowers in my garden but it’s getting sparse in out there. The leaves have started falling but not with any real commitment yet. I chose an autumn colour scheme and kept my paint choices to a minimum. I used brusho ost blue, yellow and crimson brusho and did some mixing to get all the variation you see in the card.

I stamped the large floral image from the PB set ‘radiant’ in antique linen distress ink. It’s a pale water soluble ink which is perfect for watercolouring. I used a palette with my brusho paints for this card, dropping some brusho into a well then adding water. As I was using a circular palette I left spaces between the crimson, yellow and ost blue paint so I could create mixed colours in the spaces. I painted the small flowers yellow first then while the paint was wet dropped some orange (mixed from crimson and yellow brusho) onto the petals to show detail and shadow. The large flower is painted in a dark mixed orange. The leaves are painted with greens mixed from yellow and ost blue. The stamp set includes solid flower centres to be stamped after painting. I used the large one in the large flower but couldn’t find the smaller one so I dotted black ink with a marker. Later my dad found that tiny missing stamp which made me happy.

The sentiment is from the perspective set; I only inked part of it to get the exact wording I wanted. To finish off I matted with a rust cardstock and attached to a natural white card base.

Enjoy your weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, my Canadian friends.

Supplies

Stamps: radiant 30-481 (PB), perspective 30-460
 
Inks: antique linen distress ink, versafine clair nocturne ink
 
Paper: cold pressed watercolour paper, neenah natural white, rust cardstock
 
Paint: Brusho

Pine Forest

Posted: October 4, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: pine forest | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

As I’ve said before, you can never have too many tree stamps! This one is a beauty from Penny Black. I used three green inks plus a spritz of water on the stamp; you can’t see all the detail in the trees but the mix of solid and delicate lines makes for a lot of texture. I used forest moss, pine needles, evergreen bough distress inks stamped onto cold pressed watercolour paper which I had splattered masking fluid on earlier.

After stamping the trees I painted the sky in chipped sapphire and stormy sky stains. I painted in amongst the trees so there is some green bleeding into the blue sky. I don’t let that bother me; it adds to the loose artsy feel.

Once the panel was dry I removed the masking fluid to reveal dots of snow and added a sentiment in versafine ink.

I am thankful you stopped by today.

Supplies

Stamps: pine forest 40-638(PB), Christmas sentiments 30-504(PB)

Inks: forest moss, pine needles, evergreen bough distress inks & chipped sapphire, stormy sky distress stains & Olympia green versafine ink
     
Paper: cold pressed watercolour paper

Also: masking fluid

Turnabout leaves again

Posted: October 3, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: thankful leaves turnabout | Tags: , , , | 16 Comments

In creating this card I didn’t quite follow the directions properly for a turnabout stamp. I didn’t attach my piece of watercolour paper to a 6’x6″ square of cardstock but my piece was close to 6″ so it wasn’t a waste of paper. (It is worthwhile to watch one of the Concord & 9th videos explaining how the turnabout stamps work. You know, if all else fails read the instructions, ha!) I also chose not to ink all the leaves on the turnabout stamp so as to feature the line images more than the solid ones. I inked the line images in versamark, stamped, rotated the watercolour panel and repeated. Once I had oriented the panel in all four directions I embossed all the line leaves in gold powder. I also inked some of the small leaves in forest moss distress ink. I used distress inks pressed onto my glass mat as paint to fill in all the embossed leaves.

As I hadn’t stamped all the images on the turnabout stamp I had a bit of space between leaves so I loosely painted antique linen distress stain around the leaves. I stamped one of the sentiments included in the set on a square of hot pressed watercolour paper, painted some antique linen around it and dragged the edges across a rusty hinge distress ink pad to frame the panel.

Rusty hinge is my current fave distress ink colour. I have been through a few favourites which remain in my top ten. Chipped sapphire is a long time favourite; it is deep blue after all. Spiced marmalade changed my mind about orange; I used to pick it last. Stormy sky is such a beautiful grey blue and gets along with all the colours. Forest moss tends to be the colour of all my leaves; I have to remind myself that leaves come in light green and bright green too. Seedless preserves is the prettiest deep pink around, dark or diluted it’s a winner. What are your favourite ink colours? Let me know; I might have to add to my collection.

I’m so thankful you dropped in today; take care.

Supplies

Stamps: thankful leaves turnabout stamps

Inks: forest moss, dried marigold, rusty hinge distress inks, versamark
    
Stain: antique linen distress stain

Paper: hot pressed watercolour, neenah natural white
 
Tools: cutterpillar glass mat, misti stamping positioner
 
Also: gold embossing powder, Ken Oliver gold liquid metal

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
  

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