Frames in frames

Posted: March 24, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: A2 layers, AALL & Create, Additional A2 layers, Echidna Studios, gel press, grafix, snowflake digital stamp set, Waffle Flower | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

As I write this post I realise that these cards feature snowflakes when probably all you want to see is flowers! Nevertheless I see snow falling outside this morning; it’s not over yet where I live. I used snowflake masks cut from Grafix matte duralar using my cricut and the digital snowflake set from Echidna Studios.

In my mind this post is more about the layouts than the images. I have featured the frame in frames idea before as a way to feature a large patterned panel but add some extra interest as you do so. I used the Waffle Flower A2 layer dies to cut my frames and cut all three rectangles at one time taping dies to panel to plate to keep everything in place.

On one card I kept the frames parallel to each other but on the one above I offset the two centre dies for a wonky look. The print is a gel print created with a white snowflake layer then lifted with a mixed layer of blue, turquoise and red paint. I expected the mixed layer to be much bolder but I’m happy the paints blended into a muted mix. The sentiments are from the AALL & Create ‘everyday sentiments’ set.

Thunderbird Barbie Car

Posted: October 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, Thunderbird Barbie car | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

This cool car is the latest design in the Echidna Studios etsy store. The digital stamp set is called ‘Thunderbird Barbie Car‘ and includes the front view, which I chose to watercolour, and a side view; you can see that one in the etsy store.

I printed the image on hot pressed watercolour paper on an inkjet printer. In the past I have used only a laser printer to print the digital stamps but as my daughter has an inkjet printer I thought it would be interesting to compare the two methods. The ink from the ink jet printer did blur ever so slightly when I painted with watercolour paints but not so much that it spoiled the colour or line work.

I found a T-bird photo on line and used it as inspiration for this turquoise car. I used Sennelier watercolours and a fine tip Staedtler permanent pen to darken a few lines after painting. I decided not to turn the panel into a card at this stage, perhaps it could end up in a frame instead. The cheeky little ‘Relax’ on the license plate is from the Penny Black ‘Enjoy Builder’ stamp set

This is not the first car image in the Echidna Studios etsy store. My daughter has also drawn a fabulous Vintage Beetle design which I painted last year and a cool Vintage VW bus. 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.

Window Box

Posted: August 8, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, Finetec paints, Stampin Up, Window box | Tags: , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Don’t you just want a window like this? With blooming flowers not wilting in the heat! This digital stamp is called ‘Window Box’ and it is new from Echidna Studios. My daughter designed it and there are three files to play with in the set, the image you see here as well as a separate window image and a separate window box image. I’m looking forward to trying the window box image by itself enlarged to fill a card front.

I printed the image on hot pressed watercolour paper and used Staedtler watercolour brush markers to colour the flowers, leaves, box and window frame. The window panes I painted with Coliro pearlcolors from Finetec. Some pearl or metallic paints are ‘interference’ paints which look very different on black paper as compared to white. The blue pearl paint I used from the ‘Ocean’ set looks very blue on black paper but looked silvery grey on white even with a touch of cream depending on the way the light hits it. This was exactly the effect I wanted so the panes appear like old leadlight windows where each pane reflects the light differently.

I coloured the leaves with two greens, blending them together with water and a paintbrush. I used the same technique for the flowers with a coral and a peach coloured marker. The planter was painted with a terracotta colour and the frame with black, diluted to appear grey in places. I wasn’t planning to cut this image out but it really needed to be attached to an embossed panel of aged brick. I’m sure you understand. The embossing folder is ‘exposed brick’ from Stampin Up. 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.

By the Garden Gate

Posted: March 28, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, garden fence, Inktense pencils, Stampin Up | Tags: , , , , | 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.

Tulips & more tulips

Posted: February 21, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, sennelier watercolours, tulip background, tulip set, Watercolour | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

If there are tulips already blooming where you live you must let me know in the comments! It will be another two or three months before they bloom around here. All the more reason to have some blooming here on the blog. The group you see on the card above are part of a new digital stamp called ‘tulip background‘ from Echidna Studios. The whole image is a landscape oriented design and I printed it on hot pressed watercolour paper to be 8½” wide which gave me plenty of choice when deciding which part to use on a portrait oriented card.

I used Sennelier watercolours to paint the design using various mixes of four different reds and pinky red paints. I also used one of the reds to give the green paint a more muted realistic tone. Once I had painted all the tulips and stems I used polychromos pencils to add extra shading and shadow. This is a technique I learnt from Kathy Racoosin and it always adds to the finished panel. I ruled a narrow black line around the panel to frame it.

The flowers below are from a co-ordinating digital set simply called ‘tulip set‘ also from Echidna Studios. The set includes three individual tulips. I didn’t paint this one, my daughter did, using watercolour pencils. She also fussy cut each of the three tulips to create a pretty layered arrangement.  This post includes an affiliate link to The Foiled Fox, if you use it I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. 

Digital Stamps for Starters – videos

Posted: January 11, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Christmas stockings digital stamp set, digital stamps for starters, Echidna Studios, Tutorial | Tags: , , | 4 Comments

I know the 12 days of Christmas are over, but I have one more Christmassy card to share before other themes and occasions start to appear. The style of this card will be familiar to you as I have become a fan of embossed backgrounds; this one is Gina K’s ‘holiday flora’ folder. On top is a stocking from Echidna Studios. Last year the digital Christmas Stocking stamps were released including three intricately patterned stockings for printing. This year the set is expanded to include cutting files so you can cut these lovely curly toe stockings from any cardstock you like. I chose an embossed and watercoloured scrap I had been hoarding for years!

Over the past year as I have featured digital stamps from Echidna Studios many of you have expressed interest but not known where to start with digital designs. As promised we have some how-to videos created by my daughter and posted on the Echidna Studios youtube channel. The first video explains how to buy a digital stamp on Etsy. If you find my daughter is speaking rather quickly just change the setting to 75% or hit pause to catch your breath; she is quite speedy in this first video!

In the second video she explains how to open the SVG file on your computer for printing. She and I both use inkscape to open our digital files, it is free to install on your computer. But I’ll let her explain all that:

The third video explains how to use the files to create a card. Resizing, centering and adding words are all covered in detail and I followed her instructions myself the other day to print a couple of the gingerbread digital stamps on cardstock for future cards. I definitely paused the video at times to re-watch and take note of all the steps. When I had a question I did have the video creator in the house to ask but if you have questions please put them in the comments under the video and one of us will get back to you as soon as possible.

We hope you will follow the Echidna Studios youtube channel and consider trying digital stamps and cutting files if you haven’t already. There are more videos and products coming this year. As this is my first post of 2024 I wish you happy new year! I look forward to creating and sharing all sorts of projects on the blog this year. There will be cards, art journaling, watercolouring, gel printing, collage, handmade books and more. What are you hoping to create this year?

Christmas Storefront

Posted: December 21, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Christmas bush, Christmas storefront, Darkroom Door | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

This delightful Christmas storefront is a digital design from Echidna Studios. Once again my daughter took a photo and sketched it into a digital stamp. I was delighted with the result as I had taken photos of a similar store front in Wakefield Quebec last January and sadly my photos did not represent well the beauty of the decorated store.

I printed the image on hot pressed watercolour paper then painted the scene with Sennelier watercolours. I kept the palette simple, painting the building in pale brown and Payne’s grey so the decorations would stand out. I don’t think you can see in the photo but all the icy edges of the window are coloured with wink of stella markers both the white and the clear, for a little sparkle.

Once finished, the grey in the foreground seemed like a good place for the Darkroom Door sentiment from the ‘Christmas Bush‘ set stamped and embossed in red to match the bows and berries.

I mentioned in one of my posts that I sprained my ankle in November. An aircast has made it possible to walk on it but subsequent x-rays showed a fracture so it has now been in an aircast for over five weeks. I had a follow up and more x-rays today and have been approved to walk around without the aircast at home. So it is getting better…literally one step at a time. As you can imagine I haven’t really been strolling around pretty little stores this year, my family has been running errands for me and there have been a few deliveries to our door.

Cosy Cocoa & Cookies

Posted: December 15, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: cocoa and cookies, cricut, Echidna Studios, Spellbinders | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

It’s hot chocolate season and my husband has already made a rich, yummy Mexican hot chocolate on two occasions. The cocoa and cookie cutting files from Echidna Studios are almost as appealing as the real thing! I have also made my first batch of gingerbread including plenty of tree and bell shapes.

These birds eye views of a mug and a saucer of cookies cut beautifully in different colours for layering a cup of cocoa complete with bubbles and marshmallows and a saucer of decorated gingerbread cookies.

My mug and saucer are dark green even though they might look black and I used three different shades of brown cardstock for the cup of cocoa. I thought the ‘ski lodge‘ embossing folder from Spellbinders made an appropriate background. My sentiments are also cut from green cardstock using the free ‘Agent Q’ font from Cricut design space.

For these cards I cut the image out on the cricut but the files can also be printed for colouring.

Today’s post features an affiliate links to Scrap’n’Stamp. If you buy through this link I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Christmas Filigree

Posted: November 23, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Christmas filigree, Dies, Echidna Studios, joy of giving, Penny Black, Taylored Expressions | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

I am pretty excited about these new images. I think filigree patterns are very pretty and once I got the gist of it had a lovely time designing a bell, a star and a finial ornament. I thought it made sense to have a solid background to show off the filigree and, tada, the Christmas filigree digital stamp and cut file set came to be! This set is now in the Echidna Studios store along with three more new sets and some updated Christmas sets from last year. It’s beginning to look more like Christmas every day.

I think the bell is my favourite of the three images and will come in handy making wedding cards as well as Christmas. I wanted to show off the designs on dark backgrounds but when in comes to photographing shimmery gold, embossing on dark green or navy and the high contrast of cream cardstock as well, I can’t always nail it.

So let me tell you the bells are sitting on dark green panels embossed with Spellbinders ‘forever green’ folder. The green panel on the left below is also embossed with that folder but the one on the right is embossed with the Anna Griffin ‘regal braid’ folder. The star cards at the end of this very long post are on navy blue backgrounds and it is again a little tricky to see one base is embossed with the ‘speckles/snowfall‘ folder and the other with the Taylored Expressions ‘sheet music‘ folder.

I decorated the finials and bells with a mix of die cut foliage from Penny Black including the ‘joy of giving‘ set.

As the finial is such a long thin shape I made the card a little larger than usual, around 6″x4.5″.

I created the star cards without foliage but found suitable sentiment from PB and Taylored Expressions.

I think all three designs would make lovely tree ornaments either stacked to give them extra stability or cut from thick acrylic or thin board on a laser cutter. I don’t have a laser cutter but it is possible to book time on one at the library; if get some cut I will definitely show them here on the blog.

Thanks for scrolling all the way through this long post; I really appreciate you visiting the blog. Have a great day!

Today’s post features affiliate links to Scrap’n’Stamp. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Surf’s Up

Posted: October 17, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, Surf's Up | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

What do you think of today’s funky van from Echidna Studios? A few months back I watercoloured the vintage VW beetle and it’s still one of my favourite digital images from the store. The new Surf’s Up image is equally cool and made me reach for some marbled paper that would make it all the more fun! The digital stamp set includes three surfboard images that can be positioned with the van or used on their own.

The paper I had was a 6″x6″ square which I was able to manually feed through my printer. I imagine some of you are wondering if I fussy cut this because I have been vocal in my dislike of fussy cutting in the past. Surprisingly I did cut it out and also an extra roof and van body from cardstock to tuck behind to lift and strengthen the cut out. I coloured directly on the marble paper with a black pencil, and white and silver gel pens.

Naturally a marbled van wanted a paisley backdrop so I embossed some pink cardstock with a cuttlebug folder I recently picked up at a garage sale. The bold die cut sentiment is from Penny Black. Hope you have a groovy day!

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