Mini Tree
Posted: December 21, 2022 Filed under: decorated holiday mini tree, Echidna Studios, Finetec paints, sennelier watercolours | Tags: digital stamps, Echidna Studios, Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, sennelier watercolours 2 Comments
Another festive (digital) beauty from my daughter’s etsy store, Echidna Studios. Do you recognise the inspiration for this little tree? You probably see them in the grocery store; it’s a little pot of rosemary, shaped like a tree. The design is available already decorated or in a set with separate tree and decorations. It is only a few days before Christmas so of course I am featuring the already decorated one!
I printed the tree on hot pressed watercolour paper and painted the paper wrapping and tree with Sennelier watercolour paints. Several people asked me about printing on watercolour paper. Up until recently I had no success; I would manually feed it into the printer but the ink would smudge off. A friend told me about the preferences settings when clicking to print and now I choose ‘manual feed’ and ‘heavyweight paper’ and no more smudging!
I switched to Finetec pearlescent paints and a gold gel pen to do the decorations so they have a little shimmer and shine to them. I reached into my little box of pre-stamped, pre-cut sentiments and pulled out one to suit the colours and the recipient. It’s a tall skinny tree (a bit like our family) so the card isn’t my usual size. It’s a 6¼” x 4″ olive green card base.
My life size tree is also decorated in red and gold this year. I always pick a slightly different colour scheme so this year all the red baubles came out, the tartan ribbon and the individual decorations in red, gold or wood. Do you change your colours from year to year?
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Holly Flourish 2 for 1
Posted: October 19, 2022 Filed under: Dies, Finetec paints, gel press, holly flourish, Penny Black | Tags: Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, gel press, Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolour paints, Penny Black creative dies 7 Comments
This isn’t the first 2 for 1 card combo I have posted. A few weeks back I did a similar thing with a striped watercolour background. Today’s cards are cut from gel printing clean up sheets. When gel printing I have a heavy weight art paper to the right of my gel plate where I roll off excess paint from the brayer. I cut this yellow, red and blue panel from one of those sheets.
The pretty Penny Black die is called ‘holly flourish’ and, as you can see fills a card front nicely. I have used the cut out below and splattered both negative and positive panels with gold paint. The cardstock is Neenah solar white and I added a gold cord detail to the card above.
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Bulb Basket
Posted: September 13, 2022 Filed under: bulb basket, Finetec paints, Penny Black, sennelier watercolours | Tags: Fabriano Watercolour Paper, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black stamps, Ranger Distress inks, sennelier watercolours 4 Comments
This sweet basket of Christmas balls not only makes a pretty card, it’s inspiration for a decorative arrangement in a few months time. The stamp is ‘bulb basket’ from Penny Black. I stamped it on hot pressed watercolour paper first in soft stone papertrey ink and then section by section with distress inks.
It is not clear in the photos but I used pearlescent paints to colour the balls so each one has a shimmer to it. The rest of the design is painted with a mix of distress inks and Sennelier watercolour paints. Once the painting was dry I added metallic tops to the Christmas balls with a gold gel pen. If you have this stamp or are planning to get it you might notice that there is a ribbon on the basket handle but no bow. The stamp features a bow but for the size of card I decided it was better to leave the bow loops unstamped.
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Echinacea Journal Page
Posted: August 11, 2022 Filed under: Art Journal, Finetec paints, gel press, Mixed Media | Tags: Art Journal, collage, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, gel printing 10 Comments
I have echinacea or cone flowers growing happily in my garden and now happily in my almost finished 6″x 6″ art journal. A friend recently gave me a great big dictionary for cutting up so I ripped out the ‘book’ page and the ‘journal’ page and used them to cover the whole double page spread before I did anything else.
There were a few words I didn’t want covered up so when I was ripping then gluing I took care to keep them exposed. The word ‘boomerang’ appeared so I didn’t cover that one up even though it has nothing to do with this journal page. I am an Aussie after all. ‘Bookish, bookmark, bookshelf, bookworm, book-club and bookend are all visible, some of them highlighted. Somewhere in the gluing I lost the word ‘journal’ but ‘journey’ is still there.
I used a black all pencil to darken the edges of the torn pieces and softened it with water. I also added white gesso over the top to mute the background a bit. I should have done those two steps in the opposite order so the gesso didn’t reactivate the pencil. I blended some tea dye or possibly antique linen ink around the edges and then wished I hadn’t, after all I don’t have to vintagefy everything!
I cut the petals, cone, and green bits from different gel prints using a photo I’d printed out to guide me with the shape. After everything was glued down I used black, white and gold gel pens to add details and metallic paints on the cone details as well. I added white and gold splatter and a mix of washi tape and gel print circles dotted around the the place.
Hope you are surrounded by books and flowers…if you like them as much as I do!
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Pinecone Poetry
Posted: August 8, 2022 Filed under: Finetec paints, pinecone poetry | Tags: Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black stamps 11 Comments
Yes it’s the height of summer round here so must be time for some Christmas stamping! I am a seasonal stamper as you know but when the first Christmas release comes from Penny Black I try them out straight away. It gets me started on my Christmas cards and shows you the new beauties that are available.
This large stamp is called ‘pinecone poetry’ and I have stamped and painted it with distress inks. The technique is one I have talked about many times and is made easier with the use of a stamp positioner. I worked on hot pressed watercolour paper inking the pine fronds and leaves with a mix of mowed lawn, pine needles and rustic wilderness distress inks. When it was time to paint the leaves I pulled ink from the stamping and picked up smooshed ink from my glass mat.
I used the same method for the pine cone inking with three different browns to vary the tones in the finished image. The berries are candied apple (I think) with a second addition of ink to give shadow to each berry. To complete the layout I stamped extra pine fronds and blended some green around the top left corner. I splattered gold paint over the design and added a sentiment in archival vintage photo ink.
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Gouache Hand Painted Wreath
Posted: September 1, 2021 Filed under: Finetec paints, Gouache, Hand painted, Penny Black | Tags: Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Gouache paints, Penny Black stamps, Stonehenge black watercolour paper 7 Comments
I’ve been experimenting with gouache paint. I posted a few cards with gouache painted backgrounds early last month and now I have a painted wreath to share. The Foiled Fox kindly sent me the set of gouache and I have been practising colour mixing and painting very simple shapes and patterns. You can find me on the Foiled Fox blog today with more tips and tricks about this card.
Even though I am still a gouache newbie I decided to film the process for painting a simple wreath. I only used four different gouache colours, a green, a yellow, a red and white along with one pearlescent paint. In the video you will see the process and all the colours listed by name.
You certainly don’t have to use gouache on a black background but it does really pop! I think my next path of experimentation might be to use watercolour and gouache in the same project. On a slight side note, I don’t set out to do such tiny details; I can’t help myself. My art teachers in high school and college always told me to use bigger, bolder strokes!
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Vintage Style Bookshelf + Video
Posted: July 26, 2021 Filed under: bookshelf, classic motorcycles, Coliro paints, Darkroom Door, Finetec paints, Tutorial | Tags: Darkroom Door stamps, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Ranger Distress inks, Staedtler watercolour brush pens, video 13 Comments
This isn’t my first time stamping books with Darkroom Door stamps. This time I filmed the process so you could see how I made them look all old and vintagey!
The fun thing about the Darkroom Door ‘bookshelf’ stamp is its length (just under 12″) so I decided to wrap it around my cards for maximum effect. I worked on two cards at the same time giving them slightly different paint jobs and background finishing touches. Watch the video to see my process.
Because I inked the bookshelf stamp randomly the colours moved where they willed and left me with a mix of blues and browns. This second card has some extra scratches from the DD stamp of the same name.
The insides of the cards have random paint splotches here and there so I added paper inserts for a clean place to write a note. Now that I have made a wraparound card with this border stamp I might have to try it with the other DD one I own, ‘butterfly garden‘.
Thank you so much for your interest and discussion about the gel printing I shared last week. I really enjoyed the gel printing session which resulted in my last two videos and turning a few of the prints into cards and a journal page was very satisfying. Several of you mentioned wanting to get your gel plate out to try the techniques; I hope you do. I also hope you try this brown and blue vintage style on some of your own stamped projects. If you do be sure to let me know.
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Vintage collage card
Posted: March 8, 2021 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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Rose Dance on black
Posted: February 12, 2021 Filed under: Brutus Monroe, Finetec paints, Penny Black, rose dance | Tags: brutus monroe embossing powder, Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Penny Black stamps 6 Comments
Today’s rosy card features just a portion of the Penny Black rubber cling stamp, ‘rose dance’. I’ve been creating with this stamp for a couple of days, coming up with different ways to use it. It is quite a large stamp, 6″ x 4″ but you don’t need to use the whole stamp on a card. I used only a section to create an embossed white border on a square panel of black watercolour paper.
I painted the outline design with Finetec Mica Pearlescent watercolours; I didn’t spend much time being detailed or doing blending because the pearlescent on black is very pretty without too much fussing. I wish you could see the shimmer a little better in the photo but trust me it is there in real life.
I embossed a sentiment from the PB special sentiments set in Brutus Monroe alabaster ink and popped the panel up on two pieces of black cardstock to lift it above the card base. And you might have noticed I remembered to make a matching envelope this time.
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Sea Turtle
Posted: February 11, 2021 Filed under: Brusho, Finetec paints, Pink Ink Designs, Sea Turtle | Tags: Finetec artist mica watercolour paint, Pink Ink Designs 9 Comments
I’ve never been one to stamp or paint many animals so when I saw this stamp by Pink Ink Designs I surprised myself and the owner at Crop A While by snapping it up. I have to admit I’ve been intrigued by sea turtles over the last little while. There is a youtuber we watch pretty regularly who lives on the West Australian coast who often shares footage of sea turtles. They’re graceful in the water but pretty challenged when they make their way onto land to nest. And the baby turtles who have to fight their way to the ocean to survive, that is fascinating and nerve wracking to watch.
You will probably notice this sea turtle is rather unique with a patchwork shell. I have another one painted ready for a journal page where I ignored all the patchwork and tried to paint it more realistically. This one was fun however as I chose colours to fill all those little patterns.
The turtle is embossed in black on hot pressed watercolour paper. I added the background first by wetting the panel then sprinkling brusho over it. I can’t remember which brusho powder it was, maybe a blue and a green. I kept the strongest colour away from the turtle as much as I could with water and a paper towel but I didn’t need the turtle to be white; it was fine to paint over the brusho colour.
I used pearlescent paints to paint most of the turtle but there are areas just painted with brusho also. To co-ordinate with the pearlescent paint I matted with antique gold shimmer cardstock.
Hope your day is going swimmingly!
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Heather Telford 