Postage Stamp Tulips

Posted: February 7, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Darkroom Door, Elizabeth Craft Designs, global postmarks, online class, Penny Black, postage stamps, splendiferous | Tags: , , , , | 11 Comments

I’ve been inspired so many times by my talented friend Stamping Matilda, aka Godelieve Tijskens including her delightful faux postage stamps. I’ve wanted to make some for a while so I treated myself to a fancy die from Elizabeth Craft Designs. There are many ways to make faux postage stamps including with a clever tracing wheel usually use for sewing.

Once I had my die on hand I had to decide what to make my stamps from. I decided not to stamp something especially for the faux stamps. Instead I started using patterned papers and stamped panels that were sitting around looking pretty but not serving any other purpose. The two tulip panels featured on today’s cards were made for my online class Floral Faves. There is a lesson in the class where I show a range of methods for no-line watercolour. In designing and filming the class I created quite a few no-line watercolour panels that were never turned into cards…until now. I stamped the tulips using the Penny Black stamp, ‘Splendiferous‘.

The ‘postage stamps‘ die cuts a large panel of perforated stamps all joined together. There are also small dies in the set that cut rectangles to attach inside the perforated sections. Once I had my tulip sections attached I used Darkroom Door set, ‘global postmarks‘ to add postmarks. I popped up my faux postage stamps on one A4 card and one slightly smaller card. Of course I proceeded to search my pile of possibility for more panels to turn into faux stamps! Today’s post features an affiliate link to Scrap’n’Stamp. If you buy through this link I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Like a box of chocolates

Posted: January 17, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, valentines chocolates | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

We have been enjoying a rather nice selection of chocolates at our place; the Christmas stash is lasting well! Not long after Christmas my husband and I celebrated our anniversary and it is only a month before our February birthdays so we’ve never really been big on celebrating valentines day. That being said, I loved painting this box of chocolates. It wasn’t better than eating chocolate but it was very satisfying all the same. The digital image is from the Valentines Chocolate stamp set which includes two images; the other one has chocolate coated strawberries. And yes they are from Echidna Studios, more of my daughter’s art work.

I printed the image on hot pressed watercolour paper and painted with a limited palette of browns, paynes grey, pink and yellow. I used a white gel pen to add some details and did extra shading with coloured pencils after all the painting was completed.

It’s not very obvious but you might just be able to see the texture of an embossing folder on the card base. I used a large cuttlebug folder with curly patterns, subtle but cute. Thanks for dropping by. May your chocolate stash be ever enough! Today’s post features affiliate links to The Foiled Fox. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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.

Holly Leaves – framed

Posted: December 12, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, holly leaves, Karin brushmarkers | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

This is my second pair of cards featuring the new ‘holly leaves‘ digital stamp set from Echidna Studios. In an earlier post I shared the foiled cards which were overfoiled by accident but came out looking very shimmery and still accepted watercolour. For today’s cards I printed the holly images larger and didn’t foil them. I once again used Fabriano hot pressed watercolour paper and Sennelier watercolours to paint the two images.

If you remember the foiled post you might notice I made the same colour choices, an unrealistic blue-green and a more realistic green-green! A little hint if you are painting berries, it is always nice to have a darker and a lighter side to suggest dimension but even without that a little black or white dot can make them immediately more realistic.

I chose to mat these panels and found a suitable blue green but ended up blending mowed lawn distress ink over a piece of light green cardstock to create a matching green for the card above. Blending ink to create matching mats is something Ardyth does all them time. She is full of clever strategies. I chose to add a shadowy background around the blue-green leaves using a grey Karin marker and water to dilute and spread the ink. The sentiments are from PB ‘jolly snippets‘ and ‘light of Christmas‘ sets.

Today’s post features affiliate links to The Foiled Fox. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Berry Branches

Posted: December 11, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: a berry branch, Penny Black | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

It’s another old favourite, maybe I say that a lot but when it comes to Penny Black brushstroke foliage stamps need I say more? This one is called ‘a berry branch‘ and I’ve featured it once a few years back on two different cards. How is that possible? I know it did turn up in classes a few years back and it was definitely part of this years ‘Painting with Stamps’ in-person class. Some of my previous posts have shown first and second generation prints from the same ‘inking’ and the two cards above are another example.

I keep the stamp in the stamp positioner and after stamping one panel I place another one in the same corner, spritz the still inky stamp and then stamp a paler more diluted impression. Often the second one ends up being my favourite. I used distress inks which work so well with added water.

When using this technique you can’t always control where the colours will blend into each other but I don’t let that worry me. I quite like the areas where green blends into brown into red.

Some of the panels got the splatter treatment, all were embossed with the canvas embossing folder and I added small PB sentiments either to the panel or just underneath it. Just one stamp but definitely a pretty one! Today’s post features affiliate links to The Foiled Fox. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Holly Leaves – foiled

Posted: December 7, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Echidna Studios, holly leaves, Taylored Expressions | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

The foiling on these cards didn’t work properly yet here they are on display on my blog. I decided the foiling error was pretty enough to use anyway, I just can’t tell you for sure how to achieve this accidental look! The images are new digital stamps from Echidna Studios, called ‘Holly Leaves‘. I printed both images on hot pressed watercolour in my laser printer then foiled with gold foil. Whether it was a smudgy print or a different type of foil I’m not sure but foil attached to the background as well as the outline image.

As you can see, I was still able to watercolour the images using Sennelier watercolour paints. Even though the camera didn’t capture it, the whole outline image is foiled plus some speckling in the background.

I’m not sure that holly comes in the blue green colour I chose for the card above but I like a bluey green so I keep choosing it on my projects. The green shown below might be more realistic.

I added some gold metallic thread then finished both cards with Taylored Expressions sentiment strips.

I have also painted these holly images without foiling but I think this post is long enough so I will share those cards another day. I’ve noticed lately that when my posts are quite long an ad appears before the end of the post. Sadly I have no control over that. If I don’t want ads I have to pay extra to not have them. Just think of my posts like a magazine page, ads do pop up here and there.

I don’t make money from the ads but I do make a small commission if you click one of my links from Foiled Fox or Scrap’N’Stamp. When you buy a digital stamp or cutting file from Echidna Studios both my daughter and I get very excited and congratulate each other! You might have heard the line, ‘When you buy from a small business, an actual person does a little happy dance.’ We dance!

Old favourites

Posted: November 10, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Berry kissed, Penny Black, Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

When I say old favourites I am talking in crafting years not harking back to my grandmother’s time. The PB stamp featured on today’s card is definitely a favourite, it’s called ‘berry kissed‘ and it’s been around a few years.

Another old favourite on this card is my often used technique of splattering masking fluid on my hot pressed watercolour paper before stamping or painting. After all the ink is added and dried I remove the masking fluid to reveal little white dots here and there which look like snow.

The final old favourite worth mentioning on this card is the ‘magic’ ink, memento northern pine. It is a dark green dye ink and when it is wet it bleeds into greens, blues and browns. I stamped the leaves with this ink then blended over them with a paintbrush and you can see all the different tones, especially in the close up photo. And yes, the placement of the sentiment does cover a few blotchy berries!

Today’s post features affiliate links to the following companies. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. The Foiled Fox & Scrap’n’Stamp

Double Tweetings

Posted: November 3, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Penny Black, season's tweetings | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

Today’s cards are a 2 for 1 technique. Using the PB stamp season’s tweetings I created both a bold and a soft version with only a little extra inking on the second generation impression. I worked on hot press watercolour paper with distress inks and markers. After stamping the first time I blended the leaves and bird with a paintbrush and water.

If you haven’t heard the term ‘second generation’ in regard to stamping it is simply the pale ghost image you get when you stamp a stamp a second time without re-inking. In this case I spritzed the stamp lightly with water before stamping a second time so the inks would not be too dry to leave an impression.

The second impression gave me the pale, slightly blotchy leaves which I quite liked so I dried the panel and added more ink to the bird with markers before stamping again. Of course working in a stamp positioner makes this very straight forward. The result is a bokeh type background with the bird prominent in the middle.

Many of my Christmas cards this year feature a one stamp design with loads of white space around the image. It is a bonus to get some two-for-one panels.

I finished both cards with a small sentiment from the PB set ‘holiday snippets’

Today’s post features affiliate links to The Foiled Fox. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Just Trilling

Posted: October 30, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: CAS, Penny Black, trilling trio | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

These two sweet birds are from the Penny Black ‘trilling trio’ set. There is also a cardinal in the set. I made these cards as samples for my current ‘Painting with Stamps’ class. They are examples of when slow and steady wins the race. The stamps were in my stamp positioner and, starting with the palest colours I slowly added ink to the stamp a colour at a time, stamping after each application so as to not overwhelm the small image. I did some blending on the panel with a paintbrush but again my process was ‘little by little’.(Trilling Trio is available in both the US Foiled Fox store and Scrap n Stamp in Canada)

I do enjoy the clean look of a simple image on a plain card base but added just a little texture to these images with an embossing folder to create a distinction between the panel and the base.

On the little chickadee above and below I stamped the large coloured sections in the stamp positioner then at the very end added some ‘feather texture’ with the fine tips of markers.

If you are working with bird stamps and your images are not quite coming alive I have found it helpful to use a fine tip pen to define the eye, adding the white dot back in if necessary with a white gel pen. I had not positioned this little chickadee well on my watercolour paper and it looked like it was falling backwards until I drew a simple twig with a marker to give it a reason to be at the odd angle I’d placed it! The tiny sentiment from PB ‘holiday snippets’ was just what I needed stamped in grey to keep it subtle.

Today’s post features affiliate links to the following companies. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. The Foiled Fox & Scrap’n’Stamp

Scarlet Majesty

Posted: October 26, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Finetec paints, Penny Black, Scarlet Majesty | Tags: , , , , | 7 Comments

Penny Black has released a lovely selection of poinsettia stamps over the years but this one might just be my favourite (don’t tell the others). The endearing feature on this image is those curly ends on the petals. I just love how whimsical they look. This pretty poinsettia is called ‘scarlet majesty‘ and I have featured it in years gone by.

You might have noticed that I don’t have pictures of the products used in my projects at the end of my blog posts anymore. I decided to return to just linking to products in the written text of the post. Many of the links will still be affiliate links and when clicked will take you straight to one of the three stores where I earn affiliate income. Some of the links won’t be affiliate links, they will just be for your convenience.

To create this panel I worked in a stamp positioner so I could work on one or two parts of the stamp at a time rather than try and get it right in one go. I used a couple of red distress inks to stamp the petals but wiped ink off the tips so I could ink them with green ink. I gave the stamp a spritz to get the inks moving and after stamping, blended from red to green with a paint brush. I also used some yellow ink in the centre of the poinsettia and later drew the seeds over the top with a gold gel pen.

To ink those sweet little berries I switched to water-based markers. Once dry I splattered gold paint over the panel and added a little sentiment from the PB ‘holiday snippets’. As is my preference I worked on Fabriano hot pressed watercolour paper.

Thanks for dropping by today. I appreciate your support and love to read the kind messages you leave in the comments.

Today’s post features affiliate links to The Foiled Fox. If you buy through these links I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. 

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