Shimmer grateful
Posted: October 8, 2018 Filed under: grateful for everything, Shimmerz | Tags: Concord & 9th, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Shimmerz 5 CommentsHappy 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
Circle of hearts
Posted: January 25, 2018 Filed under: hearts in circle | Tags: Brusho, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black creative dies 4 CommentsFor today’s rather bold card I started, as I often do with a masking fluid splattered panel. I continued, as I often do by sprinkling brusho powder over the panel then spritzing with water to activate it. I do tend to be a ‘chap of one idea’ at times don’t I? (Can you place that quote from one of my favourite book series?) This time the brusho was rose red and terracotta. Once dry, I splattered gold finetec paint over the panel and let it dry. I removed the masking fluid, trimmed the panel to a square then painted the edges with gold paint.
That was the easy part; after that the fiddliness factor rose considerably. I attached adhesive sheet to the back of the panel and die cut ‘hearts in circle’ from the centre of the panel and from a red adhesive backed foam sheet. I carefully saved the little hearts in formation on a piece of ‘press n seal’. I peeled the backing off the watercolour panel and attached it to the card front. Next I pressed the die cut adhesive backed foam hearts into each space in the die cut panel. Finally I peeled the backing off the die cut watercolour hearts and attached them on top of foam hearts. This was a little like completing a jigsaw puzzle.
Supplies
Shimmer heart
Posted: January 22, 2018 Filed under: Sweetheart | Tags: Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black stamps 16 CommentsI don’t often stamp on directly on black but maybe I should more often, the effect is quite striking. I stamped the ‘sweetheart’ stamp and a sentiment in versamark on neenah epic black cardstock and embossed them in platinum embossing powder. I then used a small watercolour brush to fill all the hearts and flowers with finetec pearlescent paint. The finetec paints are watercolour so I added a drop of water to the colour and mixed it in the palette before painting.
The effect is very shimmery, more so than is apparent in the photos. I wanted the same colour and amount of shimmer on the mat to frame the panel so ended up painting a border of pearlescent purple on a square of black cardstock to frame my panel before attaching both to a black card base.
Supplies

Correspondence
Posted: November 30, 2017 Filed under: Correspondence, World Map | Tags: Darkroom Door stamps, distress oxide inks, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint 7 CommentsSupplies used:
Stamps: Darkroom Door Correspondence set, Darkroom Door World Map
Ink: Versafine Ink Onyx Black
Distress Oxide inks: Fossilized Amber, Broken China, Cracked Pistachio
Also: gold paint, Nuvo Black ebony crystal drops, black foam sheet, craft mat
Paper: Neenah solar white, Hot pressed watercolour paper
Layered Poinsettia
Posted: November 24, 2017 Filed under: Brusho, layered poinsettia | Tags: Brusho, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black creative dies, Penny Black stamps, Tsukineko Versafine inks 4 CommentsAfter creating a pretty blue background through the magic of brusho yesterday, I decided to do the same with green and red for poinsettias. This set of four dies is called ‘layered poinsettia‘ and it was so easy to create pretty red and green flowers with some scattered brusho on watercolour paper. I had three scraps of hot pressed watercolour paper on my craft mat. I sprinkled mostly brilliant red brusho on two with a bit of leaf green either end, then I sprinkled more of the green and less of the red on my third strip. After I had spritzed water over them all I could see where more colour was needed so I sprinkled some more of the first two colours plus some rose red and spritzed again.
I left the scraps to dry then laid three flower dies on the strips and cut our 3×3 of the small, medium and large flowers making sure I got some green on the large and the medium ones. Once they were all cut I lay them back on my craft mat and splattered gold paint from my finetec mica pearl set over all the flowers.
I let them dry and assembled them by dotting glue on the backs. There is a teeny tiny die for the centres (which I have not lost so far!) which were cut from gold foil cardstock to tie in with my gold splatter. To assemble the card I glued the flowers on a strip of white cardstock, attached that to a strip of shimmery red cardstock then mounted it on a white card base. I added the little ‘sending joy’ sentiment from the PB holiday snippets set.
Don’t forget the Foiled Fox has a cool sale on all weekend; just click the link in my side bar or right here and use the discount code HOLIDAY2017 when you check out.
Supplies
Dies: layered poinsettia
Stamps: holiday snippets
Ink: versafine crimson red
Paints: finetec mica pearl 12, brusho 12
Neenah solar white cardstock, hot pressed watercolour paper, shimmer red cardstock, gold foil cardstock
Dancing Daisies
Posted: June 1, 2017 Filed under: dancing daisies | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress stains 10 CommentsIt’s been a bit quiet here on the blog lately. I’m spending my time on the less exciting tasks of stamping matching envelopes, stamping my new name stamp on the back of cards and packaging up said cards for the upcoming craft market on June 17. I have made a new resolution to stamp a matching envelope at the same time as I make the card. It is a bit time consuming pulling out the stamps and inks to try and match what I made weeks or months ago. I know I don’t have to have matching envelopes but they are pretty.
Stamps from Penny Black’s new ‘Poetic’ release arrived in my mail box last week so I have been itching to create with them. This new cling stamp, Dancing Daisies, should possibly be yellow, or pink, or orange if you are looking for realism but I really wanted it in blue. I wanted a particular blue what’s more and as I didn’t have an ink that colour I stamped with three different distress stains to get the blue you see in the centre of the daisy above, right next to the yellow. I inked part of the petals with salty ocean distress stain first and stamped that, then switched to dusty concord and finally added blueprint sketch. I cleaned the stamp between applications so I didn’t contaminate the dauber on the distress stains. I used dried marigold and scattered straw on the flower centres and forest moss and crushed olive stains on the stems and leaves.
My second attempt is a little different as I used some of the same colour stsains but also pulled out my pearlescent finetec paints and painted some directly on the stamp and the panel, blue on the petals, green on the leaves and gold on the flower centres. It is hard to see in the photo but there is definitely some shimmer happening.
Both panels were stamped on hot pressed watercolour paper with the help of the MISTI so I could add the colours one at a time.
Supplies:
Stamps: dancing daisies
Inks: salty ocean, dusty concord, blueprint sketch, crushed olive, forest moss, dried marigold, scattered straw distress stains (Ranger)
Paint: finetec pearlescent paints
Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper
Floral on black
Posted: March 10, 2017 Filed under: Gladsome, Hand lettered | Tags: Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Hand lettering, Penny Black stamps, WOW embossing powders 11 CommentsI’m sharing some shimmer today. Finetec artist mica pearl watercolours are very shimmery particularly on a black base. I worked on Neenah epic black cardstock and started by embossing the new outline image ‘gladsome’ in clear powder. The finetec pearl watercolour set has twelve colours so I chose a few and a small round watercolour brush to paint inside the lines.
It is hard to capture all the shimmer and shine in a photo but the mica pearl paint looks lovely as it catches the light. This is the type of card you need to tilt back and forth to see all its prettiness. I wanted to keep my sentiment co-ordinated so I used a nib pen and the same violet paint used on the petals. This is my second card with the ‘gladsome’ stamp; I like to get a range of different looks from one stamp. I think this one will be appearing again.
Supplies
Stamps: Gladsome (PB)
Pen: exclusive nib holder (Foiled Fox)
Ink: versamark (Tsukineko)
Paint: Finetec pearl colours
Paper: black cardstock
Also: WOW clear embossing powder