Bundles of Blossoms

Happy Halloween! Today I am featuring two cards which I made using the My Favourite Things "Bundles of Blossoms background" stamp and Zig clean colour real brush markers. Although I've used the same stamp and layout for both cards, they each have a very different feel about them.

For my first card I used very vibrant colours as I am entering it into a "Shades of Halloween" colour challenge. I cut the word "hooray" twice in purple and orange card, using a My Favourite Things Die-namics die,  and layered them to give a shadow effect. The "Let's Celebrate You" sentiment is from the "More Essential Sentiments" set, also by My Favourite Things. I stamped it with Versamark ink and used Zing Apricot embossing powder to heat set it. The sentiment strip was then added to my card with some foam tape for added dimension.

My second card has a very Autumnal feel and features the "Celebrate" Die-namics by MFT and another sentiment from the "More Essential Sentiments" set. This time I used Wow! Primary Chartreuse embossing powder and layered the sentiment strip again to make it stand out from the background a bit more.

Each card was a labour of love as they took ages to colour in all the intricate details, but it was very relaxing to do and I think that the end results were worth it! 

Soft Watercolour Wash Background (with Stencils) - part 2

My next card using the watercolour and stencil technique is a softer colour palette of blues, lavenders and lilacs. I chose The Crafters Workshop Mini Cubist stencil and the result reminds me a little of the works of Gustav Klimt - what do you think?

Please click on the photo for a better view.

I found the die cut banner in my stash (I think it's a Sizzix one). The sentiment is from the "Many Thanks" set by Clearly Besotted and I curved it slightly on my acrylic block, so that it fitted nicely onto the banner. I heat embossed the sentiment with Wow! Opaque Pastel Purple and mounted the banner to my card with foam pads. Finally I embellished the card with a few tiny blue and lilac gems. I was really pleased with how this one turned out and would definitely recommend using this particular stencil for this technique.

I'll be back shortly with the next card in this series.

Soft Watercolour Wash Background (with Stencils) - part 1

I have been taking an online class, Watercolour for card makers, and have been trying out lots of different techniques. Some are new to me and others I'm revisiting - but all have been lots of fun! We were set homework after each day, so my next few posts will be showing what I made for that - thankfully none of my assignments look like the dog has eaten them!

The first lesson on day 1 was to make soft watercolour wash backgrounds using stencils. I got carried away with trying out different stencils for this and ended up making five cards using this technique. For my first card I used a Tim Holtz layering stencil - Burlap (THS007) and a selection of brown shades of watercolour paint on Strathmore Bristol smooth paper.



 

 

The tag was stamped with a sentiment from Kaisercraft (from their Friendship Sentiments set) and this was heat embossed using Zing Chestnut embossing powder. I added a bow from button twine to echo Jennifer Rzasa's original design, but I felt that it needed a little more embellishment, so I added three small gold mosaic tiles.

 

 



 

 

 

My second card was made in a similar way, but using The Crafters Workshop Mini Basketweave stencil and yellow and red paints. This is very vibrant in real life and looked good on a black card blank. The sentiment is from Waltzingmouse Stamps' Compact Sentiments set and the small heart is from their Sweethearts set - I heat embossed them both using Wow! Black Glint embossing glitter. You can't see in the photo, but it's actually really sparkly! The die cut camera was mounted with foam pads for extra dimension.

 

 

I'll be back later with a few more cards. Thanks for looking. 

PTI Make It Monday Challenge #154 - Colour and Texture on a One Layer Card

Last week on the Papertrey Ink blog Erin Lincoln shared a video showing how to get lots of texture and colour onto a one layer card. You can check out her video here http://nicholeheady.typepad.com/capture_the_moment/2014/03/make-it-monday-154-color-and-texture-tips-for-one-layer-cards.html .

I knew that I'd struggle with this challenge as I love to have lots of layers on my cards! Then I remembered the "Lovely Layers" stamp set and knew that it would be perfect to use for this.

 

 

I started with smooth white card and Limeade ice ink and stamped the largest  image all over the card, making sure that the corners just touched as I stamped each one. Then I moved on to Simply Chartreuse ink for the frilly leaves and Ripe Avocado ink for the veins of each leaf.

 

For the flowers I used Winter Wisteria ink, accented with Royal Velvet ink (for both the large and small flower images. I wasn't happy with the white spaces left, so I used Ripe Avocado ink again and the larger leaf vein stamp to fill in the gaps. I thought that this looked a bit like stalks for the flowers too!

 

The sentiment is from the "Boutique Borders:Birthday" set and I stamped it with Versamark ink and heat embossed it with WOW Purple Glitz embossing glitter powder. You can just see how this sparkles in the photo below.

 

 

I stuck the stamped panel onto a square Royal Velvet card blank and was pleased with the finished result. At least I should be in time to link my entry up to the PTI challenge this week!