AI + Stencils Blue Edition

Posted: January 31, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Alcohol Ink, crackle, Darkroom Door, geometric stars, grafix, mesh, MFT stencils, My Favorite Things, Pink Fresh studio, Stencils, tall flowers, Uncategorized, you are everything | Tags: , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

After success with one of my detailed stencils over an alcohol ink panel I tried a few more all with a mix of blue inks. The one above features the Darkroom Door crackle stencil over a mix of cloudy blue and stream inks.

There is also a little bit of salt sprinkled on the panel where the stencil did not make consistent contact. This technique is definitely not for the impatient among us!

I am still working on Grafix white craft plastic and often starting over the top of a panel that already had ink on it. All the card bases are Neenah solar white.

The stencil above is MFT geometric stars and I positioned it over a panel of denim and stream inks with some leftover copper as well. The ‘print’ is not very consistent but I like the way a distinct line is right next to a blurry pattern.

I finished this one off with a die from the Pinkfresh Studio ‘sending’ die set.

I worked with the DD mesh stencil a couple of times because it didn’t make consistent contact on my first attempts. I found if I taped it over the alcohol ink panel onto a piece of scrap cardboard I could bend the cardboard slightly to make sure stencil stayed pressed onto the wet alcohol inks. I just popped the piece in the right sized container to keep it bent while it dried.

This one is a mix of denim, cloudy blue, silver and a tiny bit of stream down in the right hand corner. I added a sentiment from the DD ‘tall flowers’ set.

As you can see my fascination with this technique continues. I did pick up a couple more detail stencils the other day for this very purpose. I will also give it a try with some watercolour paints and paper. I’m sure the result will be different as the watercolour paints soak in but I think there could be a pretty and subtle pattern. Stay tuned!

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Gel Printing with stencils + video

Posted: July 12, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Butterflies, classic cars vol 1, Darkroom Door, fragments, gel press, gelli plate, Heather lowercase stamp set, little swirls, Nature Walk, Paper Rose, Pink Fresh studio, so extra supporting sentiments | Tags: , , , , | 7 Comments

In recent gel printing sessions I have used some of my intricate stencils from Paper Rose Studio. This stencil, ‘little swirls‘ makes a particularly beautiful background. I’ve been printing on a 6″x6″ gel plate with a 6″x6″ stencil but I cut the print down to make a 4¼” x 5½” card.

I used stamps from Darkroom Door’s nature walk , butterflies and happy birthday sets. (all linked at the end of the post). The process for making this type of print is shown in the video below.

After any gel printing session I usually have quite a pile of prints, some become cards but I am hoping to use more in my art journal. I have to be a bit more adventurous in tearing and layering and turning them into more than just a patterned print.

The making of the background above is included in the video. To turn it into a birthday card I stamped ‘have fun’ directly on the print then popped up a sentiment strip on top. The words are stamped in Gina K obsidian amalgam ink using the Pink Fresh Studio ‘Heather’ lowercase alphabet set.

The making of the background below is also part of the video and you can see the mustard paint beaded on the surface of the gel plate making an allover pattern when printed. I didn’t necessarily want the beading but was happy when it ended up uniform. Paints of different brands perform differently on the gel press so experimentation is necessary to work out how much paint and which brands will give you the results you want.

I turned this background into another birthday card by embossing a car from the Darkroom Door Classic Cars vol 1 set along with a sentiment from the same set plus one from the Happy Birthday set.

I also filmed some gel printing with a few textured surfaces from the recycling box; I’ll be sharing that video soon.

I’d love to hear how you use your gel prints; I’m always open to ideas.

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Floral Focus in pencil

Posted: July 5, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Brutus Monroe, floral focus, Heather lowercase die set, Inktense pencils, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

Last week I shared a card featuring the Pinkfresh Studio background stamp, ‘floral focus‘ watercoloured with Karin Markers. Today I have another card with the same stamp but pencil coloured this time using Derwent inktense pencils. At some point I should do pencil colouring on white or cream cardstock again but I am still in love with the look of pencil on kraft. Inktense pencils are watersoluble but you can also use them as traditional pencils with no water added, that’s what I did here.

I embossed the background stamp in white powder, another technique that looks great on kraft cardstock then used the inktense pencils to fill the flowers and leaves. The flowers are coloured with red violet, fuchsia and antique white. The leaves and stems I did with felt green and apple green and the small flowers are coloured with sun yellow and antique white.

To finish the card I added a strip of violet cardstock and cut letters from the same cardstock with the Pinkfresh ‘Heather lowercase letter’ dies. The little sentiment is from PF set ‘scripted bold sentiments. You might think this is an odd pairing of sentiments; I was thinking it would suit someone starting something new, some encouragement along with a reminder to enjoy the experience.

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Floral Focus

Posted: June 28, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: floral focus, Heather lowercase stamp set, Karin brushmarkers, Lea ornate uppercase stamp set, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , | 7 Comments

Hello! I am excited to be sharing this post here and on the Foiled Fox blog today. All this floral beauty is on one stamp from Pink Fresh Studio and it’s called ‘floral focus’. Since it arrived on my work table I’ve tried it with pencil colouring, emboss resist and this Karin brushmarker watercolour technique. I love how bright and summery it looks with these colours.

Floral Focus is a large rubber background stamp and rubber stamps are my favourite to work with. I know transparent stamps are great for placement but rubber stamps seem to hold onto their ink better. I will always have both in my collection but I get a little bit excited when I ink the rubber stamps. I used a stamp positioner for this panel and inked the large pink flowers first with magenta red and henna markers. If I get ink on adjacent areas I just wipe it off before stamping. Once stamped I blended the pink ink to fill the petals and restamped the centres in brown to make them a bit bolder. Next I inked the small flowers and buds with the gold brushmarker, then blended with water. For the leaves and stems I inked with both henna and grass markers to get a muted green rather than a bright green. Finallly I did the twiggy bits with the henna marker.

The large letters are from two Pink Fresh studio alphabet sets, the ‘H’ is from Lea’s Ornate uppercase set and the rest of the word from the Heather lowercase set. I stamped several times in versafine vintage sepia then embossed in clear powder for a glossy finish.

Thanks for dropping by today, make sure you visit the Foiled Fox blog for more information and inspiration!

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Dancing Peacock

Posted: April 26, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Altenew, dancing peacock embossing folder, Heather lowercase die set, Papertrey Inks, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

Today is another fun day on my blog because the Foiled Fox and I have teamed up to share this amazing embossing folder with you and to announce the winner of our recent giveaway. In a shared post earlier in April we asked you to tell us what is on your wish list. I really enjoyed reading your answers and share some of your wishes. Today’s card is a result of a wish list longing I’ve satisfied recently. I kept seeing cards with beautiful backgrounds achieved by using an embossing folder. I ordered a few and the Foiled Fox sent me a couple of lovely ones from Altenew including the ‘dancing peacock’ one you see here.

To create this dramatic panel I used hot pressed watercolour paper knowing that I would be spritzing the panel with water to make the inks blend. A spritz of water on the cardstock can also keep the panel from tearing when it is inside the folder going through the die-cutting machine. As I wanted the pattern to be raised on my card front I inked the non-raised side of the embossing folder with four peacock tones from Papertrey ink. I gave the folder a light spritz of water to get the inks blending.

The inks and the very detailed embossing folder did exactly what I’d hoped and created a blended textured panel. The inks didn’t cover the whole area so I used a paintbrush and some water to spread the inks to the edges and let the panel dry. I waited for it to air dry but I think it would have been fine to use the heat tool. Once dry I placed it back into the embossing folder and ran it through the machine again to sharpen the edges of the design.

To complete the card I trimmed the embossed panel to 4⅛” x 5⅜” so it would be framed with a narrow white frame. I cut the letters of the word ‘celebrate’ with Pinkfresh Studio’s ‘Heather lowercase’ die set and snuggled them together to fit along the lower edge of the card front. To overlap the letters neatly I attached some directly to the panel and popped others up on foam tape.

And now what you’ve all been waiting for, the winner of gift certificate to spend in the Foiled Fox store. Congratulations, Jo Anna! The Foiled Fox will be in touch.

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway. Among the list of crafty items people are wishing for there were several mentions of new PB floral and sentiment stamps – no surprises there! A few people are wishing for markers, both Karin and distress – again I totally understand. Some of you are after inks, including the new distress colours; did you see the newest one released over the weekend, ‘salvaged patina’? Well, I now know I need some salvaged patina in my life! At the risk of sounding like I want ‘all the things’ I will stop here and once again thank the Foiled Fox for collaborating with me and supporting my blog and creativity, something I love sharing with you.

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Lemon Lush – pencil on kraft

Posted: March 26, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: A2 layers, Additional A2 layers, Coloured pencil, floral notes, lemon lush, Pink Fresh studio, Waffle Flower | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

I have a second card featuring the pretty ‘lemon lush’ stamp from Pinkfresh Studio. Last time I used peerless watercolours for a bold, bright look. Today’s white on kraft combo is softer and subtler.

I stamped the large 6″ x 6″ stamp on kraft cardstock in Brutus Monroe alabaster ink then embossed in alabaster powder. I used polychromos pencils to colour all the elements. The whole lemons needed a few shades of yellow and orange but the rest of the design was completed with pairs of inks, two greens, two pinks or two yellows with sometimes the addition of white to soften or brighten.

The sentiment is from the Pinkfresh set ‘floral notes’ embossed in white then cut and framed with the help of my ever-useful Waffle Flower A2 layer dies.

Wishing you a bright and happy day!

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Lemon Lush

Posted: March 15, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: floral notes, Karin brushmarkers, lemon lush, Peerless watercolours, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments

It’s a collaboration day with The Foiled Fox, so I am over on their blog and sharing here at home too. Make sure you pop over there to learn more about today’s card process and products.

Isn’t this a bright happy image? I know it’s partly the colours I chose but I think it is also the mix of lemons, leaves and flowers. It’s a glimpse of summer and that is definitely welcome! The stamp is called ‘lemon lush’ and it is a large 6″x6″ from Pinkfresh Studio. I’ve used two thirds of it for this rectangle card but I’ll be showing you the whole square image on another card soon.

I stamped the rubber stamp on hot pressed watercolour paper in raven black ink and embossed in raven powder (both from Brutus Monroe). For the watercolouring I used Peerless watercolours. I watercolour with quite a few different products so sometimes the Peerless paints sit on the shelf feeling forgotten. Once I bring them out however, I remember just how beautifully they blend and what gorgeous colours are available. If you haven’t heard of Peerless watercolours paints they are an old, old company and the paint is in pieces of thick paper. I use a wet brush to pick up paint to use on my project.

When painting the cut lemons I used a yellow and a light orange paint, for the whole lemons I used the same plus darker orange tones to get depth and shadow. I used two greens for the leaves, a blue for the tiny flowers and violet for the large flowers. To fill in the berries I switched to a purple Karin brushmarker. The sentiment is from Pinkfresh Studio’s ‘floral notes’ set stamped in monarch versafine clair. I stamped the flap of my envelope too with memento dandelion ink. If you take a close look at the second photo you will see some clear dots glued to the lemon halves, those droplets of juice might just be my favourite part of the card! Thanks for joining me today and thank you Foiled Fox for sending me this stunning stamp to create with.

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Floral notes slim

Posted: March 3, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: floral notes, Heather lowercase die set, Karin brushmarkers, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , , , | 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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You’re a star

Posted: February 19, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Alexandra Renke, Heather lowercase die set, My Favorite Things, ornamental star stencil, Pink Fresh studio, YAY for you | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

I’ve been wanting to work with some of my new stencils and the CAS Mix Up challenge is currently a embossed stencil challenge so I got to work. I taped the Alexandra Renke ornament star stencil to a piece of hot pressed watercolour paper and started sponging some versamark ink through the stencil. I soon switched to just squishing the versamark ink pad directly on the stencil as that was faster. I embossed the star in clear powder then put the panel in a box so I could spray some stain over it without decorating myself or my desk.

I sprayed seedless preserves, faded jeans and speckled eggs distress stains over the panel from 20-30cm away and ended up with a pretty speckled panel. I wanted to make the spotted sprayed area transition from speckled to solid so I painted water over one edge then spritzed water next to the painted area which achieved my goal leaving some of the panel barely touched by water. It took quite a while to dry and impatient me did smudge some of the speckles but they are underneath the die cut letters now so no harm done.

I applied tape to the back of a piece of co-ordiating cardstock then cut the letters s,t,a,r out using the ‘Heather lowercase alphabet’ die set from Pink Fresh studio. I searched through my stamps and dies to find a sentiment I could alter to say ‘you’re a’ and ended up using part of a stamp from the MFT ‘Yay for You’ set stamped in versafine monarch ink.

When I was doing the spray over embossing step I realised this stencil is probably going to pair up with spray stains again in an art journal page, the speckled effect over the lacy star is just so pretty.

I’m excited to participate in a challenge again, it has been a while! There is still time to get involved if, like me you have stencils that are waiting patiently to be the star or even the background of a card.

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Winter Wonder art journal page

Posted: February 1, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: A blizzard, Art Journal, Brusho, Classes, Dies, fir tree, Heather lowercase die set, online class, Penny Black, Pink Fresh studio, Skis 'n' sled, Snow time, winter trees, winter wardrobe | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

After my son and I finished filming the stop animation intro for my Winter Wonder online class I didn’t know what to do with the painted background and all the die cuts we’d used. They lay on a tray still in their snowy formation for a few months gathering dust until I realised I could keep the scene if I transferred it to my art journal.

The initial spread was bigger than art journal page so I cut down the watercoloured background panel, cut new snowdrifts out of lighter weight cardstock and added ink blending to help them stand out. I saved the trees, sled, skis, mitts, snowflakes and bird all cut using the Penny Black dies listed below and glued them on. Yes the gluing almost finished me but I persevered and even glued the outline letters from Pink Fresh studio. I found that I do have a glue pen that works if you are patient and take note that enough glue if coming out.

If you haven’t scene the stop motion animation it is part of the promo for my WINTER WONDER class which teaches my methods for making cards with a northern winter theme. I’ll include the promo below just for fun and in case you’re new around here.

The scene shown in the journal page is mirrored outside right now; we have plenty of snow, we’ve been skiing and enjoying winter wonder all around us. Back in October-November when we filmed the class there was little to no snow!

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