Filled with daydreams

Posted: March 10, 2021 | Author: Heather | Filed under: branch of love, daydream, dotlets, Penny Black, rain or shine | Tags: brutus monroe embossing powder, distress markers, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Penny Black stamps, Penny Black stencils, Ranger Distress inks | 11 Comments

I’ve created with the Penny Black ‘daydream‘ stamp before but you might not recognise it as the same stamp used on today’s card. Last time I stamped the large rubber cling stamp once in blue. This time I’ve stamped it twice to almost fill the card front in pink and deep red. I’ve also added some filler foliage.

I kept the stamp in the stamp positiioner while I completed one print of the stamp then rearranged the panel and stamp to be able to stamp again in a slightly different direction to cover the lower third. I inked the stamp first with worn lipstick distress ink, added shading with an aged mahogany distress marker, stems with ground espresso and centres with black soot. I spritzed ever so lightly because I didn’t want to loose much definition but I did want the inks to blend a bit. After one impression I blended a few areas with a paintbrush and stamped more aged mahogany where needed to help define the petals. Once the ink and blending was dry I coloured around the black centres with a mustard seed marker.

To add filler around the red blooms I stamped the fronds from the PB ‘branches of love’ set in bundled sage ink then blended over them with a paintbrush and minimal water. I also used a blending brush to blend some bundled sage circles through the PB ‘dotlets’ stencil. I splattered some moss green pearlescent paint then popped up an embossed sentiment to finish the card.

Thanks for dropping by today; you do brighten my day!

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Vintage collage card

Posted: March 8, 2021 | Author: Heather | Filed under: Coliro paints, Darkroom Door, diamonds, Dies, Finetec paints, French Script, Gazette, gerberas, gift card pocket, global postmarks, Penny Black, shall we dance, Stencils | Tags: Coliro paints, Darkroom Door stamps, Darkroom Door stencils, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks | 4 Comments

A friend commissioned me to make a ‘vintage’ themed card recently and I happily pulled out a bunch of Darkroom Door stamps to do so. You can see the pocket watch stamp managed to feature three times but the French script, global postmarks, and gerberas also contributed. I stamped, blended and painted with two brown tones of distress ink, two blues and a black. (all the supplies are listed below)

To begin I smooshed some speckled egg and antique linen distress inks on a glass mat, added water swiped the panel through the diluted ink. After that the gerbera background stamp became part of the base layer in speckled egg distress ink. I layered the other stamps over the top in tea dye and antique linen inks and blended some speckled egg ink through the DD diamonds stencil. Of course there is splatter, watermarks and extra blending to darken the edges. To add a dimensional feature I die cut several stems of flowers with the Penny Black ‘shall we dance’ die, some are from watercolour paper, some from tan cardstock and a few from paper painted with salty ocean ink and stamped with the DD gazette stamp.

Almost finished, I added a strand of twine around the base and tied some tiny tags on with stamped PB sentiments on them and some little wooden stars I found. I was pretty happy with all this vintageness but decided to risk some gold paint. I splattered and added it to the tiny stars and heart, the flower centres. Where it worked best though was unevenly painted along the edges of the square panel. You probably can’t even see it clearly but it ended up being one of my favourite parts of the card.

By the way there are yummy new stamps on the Darkroom Door website. You will see them here soon, a few are winging their way here as you read this! Have a great day.

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Floral notes slim

Posted: March 3, 2021 | Author: Heather | Filed under: floral notes, Heather lowercase die set, Karin brushmarkers, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Karin brushmarkers, Pink Fresh studio, WOW embossing powders | 5 Comments

I’ve teamed up with the Foiled Fox again to share this lovely slimline Pinkfresh Studio stamp. The stamp is called ‘floral notes’ and it’s just over 8″ long! The set also includes some sentiments which I will feature another day.

I embossed the floral stamp in gold powder then added colour with dabs of ink from the Karin brushmarkers (I only used royal blue, lilac, gold and black). I say dabs because that is really all it takes to watercolour with the Karin markers. I dab a few dots of ink where I want the colour to be strongest then blend from that point with water to fill the petals or leaves. I was wanting variation in the petals and was happy to achieve it particularly in the large flowers coloured in lilac.

After the colouring was complete I splattered ‘pearl gold’ pearlescent paint from Finetec; it was a close match to the WOW metallic gold embossing powder. For a sentiment I cut ‘hello’ with the Pinkfresh ‘Heather lowercase alphabet dies’ and left the border off so the letters would not be too big then added a blended sentiment using dies from the Pinkfresh ‘scripted bold sentiments’ set.

Previous to making this card I lost the letter ‘t’ die from the alphabet set. It was after cutting the word ‘star’ for another card. As you can imagine this caused me great dismay. Without the ‘t’ there would be only birhdays, bes wishes and merry Chrismasses! I searched high and low and went my workroom garbage and recycling multiple times. Yesterday, after eleven days without it, the ‘t’ was returned to the alphabet. It had fallen into the MFT box in the filing cabinet right between ‘YAY for you’ and ‘painted prints’!

I’ll be using this pretty floral stamp again and not necessarily just on slimline cards. The sentiments from the set are also lovely so keep an eye out for them. Don’t forget to visit the Foiled Fox blog today for more details including measurements.

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Freshly cut flowers

Posted: February 15, 2021 | Author: Heather | Filed under: Foiled Fox store, fresh cut, love you Mom, Papertrey Inks, Penny Black | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Papertrey ink, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps | 2 Comments

I’ve teamed up with the Foiled Fox again to share a post on their blog. If you pop over there you can read all the process details for this floral card featuring a stamp and a die from Penny Black.

This stamp is called Fresh Cut and it is a rubber cling stamp of five long stem roses. I did some masking and partial stamping to fill the corner of my panel with eleven orange roses. I guess I should have added one more to have a dozen!

You might recognise the background style on this card; it is inspired by some of Jill Foster’s amazing cards for Penny Black. Because all those roses make the panel a little busy I separated the stacked die-cut words from the roses with a piece of vellum, just to make it easier to read. Don’t forget to visit the Foiled Fox blog today for all the details and while you are there browse awhile for more inspiration.

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No-line Watercolour with Karin brushmarkers

Posted: December 21, 2020 | Author: Heather | Filed under: frozen vista, Karin brushmarkers, Penny Black, poinsettia poem | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Karin brushmarkers, Papertrey ink, Penny Black stamps, Tsukineko Versafine inks | 8 Comments

I’m happy to be teaming up with the Foiled Fox again to bring you some more Karin brushmarker experimenting, this time I put them to work on no-line watercolour. I was pretty sure they would do a good job and I wasn’t disappointed. I also discovered that Papertrey Ink’s ‘soft stone‘ ink works well as a base stamping ink for no-line watercolour. To begin I stamped the same Penny Black poinsettia poem stamp on two pieces of hot pressed watercolour paper. On the design above I used only three Karin brush markers (red 209, teal 377 and henna 105) When colouring the leaves I inverted the red marker tip to tip with the teal before colouring to create the more browny green you see on the leaves.

I painted the petals one by one as is usually the case with no-line watercolour and I used the Red 209 marker. I used a slightly different methods for each card. On the above panel I barely touched the marker to the paper in each petal then blended the ink with water to fill the petal. On the panel below I painted a petal with water first then added a dot or two from the marker which flowed into the wet area. The effect is similar but the petals are paler where I applied water first and marker second.

On the second card I used magenta 170, lush green 228 and sepia 074. Once again I did a bit of tip to tip colour blending for the leaves and berries. It takes a bit of trial and error plus some scrap paper for testing to get the right mix of colour when doing the tip to tip blends. After adding ink to a marker tip the first strokes of colour will be the most intense and as you continue to apply ink to paper the intensity will decrease as the colour returns to its original tone. Make sure you visit the Foiled Fox blog where I provide even more detail about today’s projects.

I used a textured shimmer green cardstock to create a die-cut frame for the card at the top of the post. It is easy to cut a narrow frame by using two rectangle dies from the Waffleflower A2 layer dies. For the second card I used mulberry cardstock to create a co-ordinating mat and stamped with both versafine clair tulip red & chianti to stamp the sentiment in a matching colour. When I don’t have the exact ink colour for a sentiment I try a combination of two inks, something a stamp positioner makes quite straight forward. I stamped the sentiment on the first card with my beloved memento northern pine ink. The sentiments are from Penny Black sets, Christmas feeling and frozen vista.

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Tannenbaum Forest – video

Posted: December 4, 2020 | Author: Heather | Filed under: Penny Black, tannenbaum trio, Uncategorized | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks | 11 Comments

Funny story about this card, I realised last night that, although I had written in it, addressed it and even added the stamp to the envelope, I hadn’t taken the photos to go with today’s video tutorial. I pulled it out of the envelope, took some photos, did a little editing magic so you couldn’t see my handwriting on the inside then popped it back in the envelope. It’s mailed now, on its way to Australia.

This is one of two videos I’ve made featuring the tannebaum trio set from Penny Black. I’ll post the other one soon. I did generational stamping in a few colours to get the background trees to appear to be in the distance. It’s a fairly speedy technique which you could mass produce once you got into the swing of things.

As I’ve said before ‘you can never have too many tree stamps’ and the three in this set are no exception. You have already seen me pop them in a few cards on their own to add a foreground tree to a snowy scene or to be a single focal point on one of the mini cards I posted yesterday.

Thank you again for your interest in and support of the Dressember campaign. A couple of close friends I have made through card making helped move my fundraising total along yesterday. Thank you so much!

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Books & Tea

Posted: November 13, 2020 | Author: Heather | Filed under: book spines, classic motorcycles, Correspondence, Cup of tea, Darkroom Door, Finetec paints, mini open book, sennelier watercolours | Tags: Darkroom Door stamps, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, sennelier watercolours | 7 Comments

Ever since I created a ‘what should I read next?‘ art journal page I’ve been wanting to do a similar design on a card featuring the Darkroom Door ‘mini book’ and ‘book spines’ stamps. This time a teacup joined the party.

What is more delightful than a cup of tea and a good book? Maybe a cup of tea with another book lover?

I stamped the book spines stamp three times in hickory smoke archival ink on a piece of hot pressed watercolour paper (which had been splattered with masking fluid). I set out both my Sennelier watercolour paint palette and a Finetec pearlescent set to paint the books. I mainly used the Sennelier paints but added drops and swipes of pearlescent paints here and there for interest.

Once the paints dried I used a handful of gel pens to add decoration to the book spines. I decided not to add titles (there is other pressing work to be done after all) just patterns. I removed the masking fluid, blended tea dye and vintage photo ink around the edges then splattered some vintage photo ink over the panel.

The mini book is stamped in versafine vintage sepia and then stamped with a script stamp from the DD ‘correspondence’ set and a sentiment stamp from DD ‘classic motorcycles’. The teacup from DD ‘cup of tea’ set is embossed in gold powder then painted a pale rose. I fussy cut both the book and the cup (I know – I’m surprised too). The book panel is matted in cream then attached to a grey luxe card base. I attached the mini book and teacup to hang over the edges of the panel ever so slightly.

Right now I would love to curl up on the couch with a good book and a cup of tea but I am editing my next online class! I am very excited to get it finished for you as it has a seasonal theme which might interest you right about now.

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Cozy Cabin video

Posted: November 11, 2020 | Author: Heather | Filed under: cozy cabin, Penny Black, Stamped Landscapes, Tutorial | Tags: distress markers, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, grafix, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress stains, video | 6 Comments

This cute cabib is another new stamp from Penny Black; the set is called ‘Cozy Cabin’ and it includes this tree shadowed cabin plus an extra tree not shown on this card. Once again I enjoyed bringing this scene to life with splattered masking fluid and distress inks.

I used a stamp, paint, stamp, paint process to build up the colour and definition of the cabin. I had my glass mat at hand so I could smoosh inks then pick up colour with a paintbrush.

When we go cross country skiing in Gatineau Park we come across cabins that look a little like this. There are several scattered across the park for the use of skiers, complete with a wood stove, tables and benches so we can warm up, eat our snacks, and rest a little before heading back out in the snow.

I’m in no hurry for the snow to come but I do have new skis and boots after years of hand-me-downs so the pressure will be on this year to make good use of them!

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Seashells Filmstrip

Posted: October 30, 2020 | Author: Heather | Filed under: Darkroom Door, seashell filmstrip | Tags: Darkroom Door stamps, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Ranger Distress inks | 4 Comments

Before you wonder why a seashell card has popped up right after a snow covered bell card remember that not everyone is heading into winter right now. I can wistfully look at these seashells and wish I was entering an Australian summer and that wistfulness would not just be about the weather! Speaking of Australia, this stamp is from Darkroom Door and is one of their new filmstrip stamps.

I used a stamp positioner to stamp the filmstrip edge to edge moving my panel up or down each time to feature a different portion of the stamp. I used five different inks to ink the stamp fairly randomly then spritzed it before stamping so the inks were already moving. I continued blending the colours with a paintbrush on the watercolour paper panel.

You can see some shells are more sharply defined than others which corresponds to how much water I added before and after stamping. I stamped a sentiment from the DD sentiment strip – friendship stamp. I have kept the stamp as one long strip (I think many people have done so), so I can stamp them all at once or stamp a section and cut out the one I want. In this case I stamped a section, cut out the sentiment I was after then ripped one edge and coloured the tear with wild honey distress ink.

I have a shell collection which sits untouched in a box for years at a time and then an occasion like this arises and I open the box and remember how delighted I always am when walking on a beach looking for shells.

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Bell & Berries

Posted: October 28, 2020 | Author: Heather | Filed under: bell & berries, Coliro paints, Finetec paints, fragile branches, Penny Black | Tags: Coliro paints, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Papertrey ink, Penny Black stamps, Tsukineko Memento inks | 13 Comments

Over the summer I kept reaching for the blues and greens; they were refreshing in the hot weather. It appears that my fascination with them is continuing into the winter! I created this wintry panel with the Penny Black ‘bell & berries stamp and the versatile PB ‘fragile beauty’ set.

When I started this panel by stamping only the branch section of the stamp at the very top I chose only blue, grey and green inks. Choosing green over red for the berries helped to create a fresh frosty look. After stamping only the top branch I repositioned the stamp and stamped the whole image then finally a bit more branch on the right hand side. The extra twigs were added in dark blue.

I inked the leaves with papertrey ‘enchanted evening’, a dark blue and ‘stormy sea’, a grey blue. I used the olive toned ‘prairie grass’ for the berries. When I spritzed the stamp before stamping on the hot pressed watercolour paper the inks began to blend. I did further blending on the paper with a paint brush and water but didn’t blend every part of the image, some leaves and berries I kept unblended to show the texture of the paper and stamp.

The paper had spots of masking fluid splattered over it before I began which caused the white dots you see in the finished panel.

I stamped the bell in a mix of stormy sea and true black ink and also added ‘blue silver’ pearlescent paint from the Coliro ‘ocean’ set so there is a shimmer to it in real life.