Followers

Saturday 16 May 2015

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing



I’ve had fun playing today with Inking of You from Tiddly Inks and, appropriately, inks.


The card I’ve made is going to a friend who wants to get back into painting but is finding it hard to make the time.  She’s got the canvas and paint and just needs some brushes so I’ve bought her one and made this card to nudge her into getting more brushes and putting them to canvas.
To match the theme I’ve done up my own backgrounds for my card, I’m quite proud of my efforts and the fact I haven’t used a single designer paper but still ended up with a colourful and interesting result.  The first thing I did was hunt down some canvas, I’ve actually used a Prima Mistables sheet, I tried misting the front but I can’t control spray paints (never much of a rebel so I wasn’t a graffiti artist) so turned it over and used a stencil to make paint splodges with modelling paste.  I then used my Smooch Spritzes to colour up my paint splodges, I sprayed my craft mat and used a brush to get the ink just on the paint splodges.  Not sure if this still counts as using mists but going to link up my card at Cut It Up! anyway, I certainly have the other requirement of a die cut, which I’ve used as a frame for my ‘artwork’.

The burned batik background of my artwork was done following a tutorial by Beate on Splitcoast Stampers.  I used a piece of stamping paper and white embossing powder.  I wasn’t happy with the way the inks looked when I used a sponge applicator to place them so I spritzed the card with water to give my background a lovely watercolour effect.  So I guess this is actually burned aqua batik.

The layout of my card follows the sketch over at Aud Sentiments, I did make the top square element into a larger rectangle, basically because I had already coloured my image and it was too big to fit in the right sized square.  The sentiment I moved as I couldn’t think of anything else to put on the vertical rectangle element, it’s a little hard to see but I still like the effect.  I also swapped out the horizontal rectangle element for paint brushes as I thought these really added to the whole theme I have going.

I actually did the same to the image.  I wanted to use another Tiddly Inks’ image of an artist but unfortunately it is retired so I had to go with the one I had.  I just cut off the bottom of her fountain pen and made a brush end, rather than colour the paint on it I added some modelling paste and coloured it with Smooch Spritz also.

The card is actually a twisted easel, which allowed me to add in my second sentiment, a rather fitting quote from a very famous painter; a little ironic too given how little motivated da Vinci was at actually painting. It's a bit hard to read in the pic, the quote is "Being willing is not enough we must do".  Over at Penny’s Paper-Crafty their theme is more than one fold, so I am entering my card in their challenge.


Ingredients:
Copics
Skin E31, E33, E37 (R20 cheeks)
Hair E37, T4, T6, T8, 110
Outfit B23, B24, B37, B39, B41, N5, N7, N9, W5, W7, W9, 0, 100
Brush C1, C3, C5, E51, E53, E55, E70, E71, E74
Chalks & Powders etc
Fran-tage Embossing Enamel ~ Aged Ochre
Wow! Embossing Powder ~ Opaque Bright White
Dies, SVGs & Templates etc
13@rts Stencil ~ Numbers
Embellishments
Mont Marte ~ Gallery Series Brushes
Inks & Paints etc
Inkssentials ~ Emboss It Clear
Smooch Spritz ~ Cherry Ice, Emerald Sprinkle, Majestic, Mixed Berries, Sea Kiss & Sun Kissed
Teresa Collins Basically Essential ~ Modelling Paste
Tim Holtz Distress Ink ~ Dusty Concord, Salty Ocean, Tea Dye & Wild Honey
Papers
Bazzill Cardstock Monochromatic ~ Raven
Brown Cardstock from stash
Kaisercraft Cardstock ~ Licorice
Stamps
Stempelglede ~ Grunge Flourish Hearts & Magic
Challenges

Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday 10 May 2015

Teach me the ways of the Gemini twin...



Today I have a beautiful card I made for a friend’s birthday featuring Gemini Betty from Simply B Stamps.

 
My card follows the current sketch over at Noor! & Zo.  As Gemini is an air sign I thought I’d make up a background with a cloud pattern, unfortunately most it got lost under the rest of the designer papers I used but it was still fun getting a bit messy with PanPastels and modelling paste.

I selected my designer papers again to fit with the air theme I was going for, beautiful ones from Maja Design.  My embellishments on my card follow the recipe over at Inkspirational as I’ve distressed the edges of my papers (I left the edges uninked deliberately to pick up the white highlights in the designs and boy did that feel weird, then swapped it round for the image, I inked that as the paper was white), added embossing powders around my image and used flowers for my embellies.

Embossing is also the theme at Just Us Girls and I have two kinds, heat embossing around my image and my die cut element.  Here again I echoed the white print on my designer paper by highlighting the raised areas with white ink.

Ingredients:
Copics
Skin E000, E00, E11, E21 (E02 cheeks)
Eyes E30, E33, E35, E37, E39, G40, G43
Lips R24, R29, R46, R59
Hair E21, E23, E25, E27, E29
Outfit B 00, B91, BV17, BV20, BV23, BV25, BV29, C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, Y21, Y23, Y26, Y28
Chalks & Powders etc
Fran-tage Embossing Enamel ~ Aged Silver & Chunky White
Lindy’s Stamp Gang Embossing Powder ~ Hydrangea Blue Mauve
PanPastel ~ Neutral Grey Tint & Titanium White
Dies, SVGs & Templates etc
Joy! Crafts Noor! ~ Blue Border (6002/0149) & Tag 2 (6002/0285)
Embellishments
Inks & Paints etc
ColorBox ~ Frost White
Tim Holtz Distress Ink ~ Weathered Wood
Teresa Collins Basically Essential ~ Modelling Paste
Papers
Cardstock from stash
Maja Design Coffee in the Arbour ~ Blueberry Cupcake, Butterflies are Free & Enjoying the Moment
Stamps
Stampin’ Up! ~ Happiest Birthday Wishes
Challenges

Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday 9 May 2015

In their fragrance hidden…



Another day and another birthday in May, this time I’ve used a lovely image on my card from Jeremiah Ketner called Orchids.


Jeremiah’s style is sketchy and I have to say I don’t like those black lines of shading on images so I fixed the problem by printing the lines really light so they pretty much disappeared under my colouring.  I also altered the proportions of the image a bit to fit into my die (she’s taller and thinner) as I’ve made a resolution to put a die cut on every card I make so I can actually use every single one of the 250+ dies I own (and, no, I don’t have enough!).

To make up my card I’ve followed the current card sketch over at Sketch-N-Scrap, created by one of their sketch artists Kelly.  I resized the sketch to my fav card size (6x6) which made the circle an oval so then I flipped it to accommodate my image.

I also used the image at Just Add Ink for some inspiration, I loved the colours and the pattern of the leaves.  I went searching through my stash of papers and found the Maja Design paper with a flower print that was similar and with a blue background that echoed the chair in the photo.  I wanted to use flowers rather than leaves but rather than traditional roses used flowers from my stash that matched the shape of those on the designer paper, which to me are similar in shape to the leaves in the picture and tied in with the image, which I was just really wanting to colour.  The white flower in the vase inspired the addition of the white roses to add a bit of depth to my flower arrangement.

Over at Brown Sugar they are looking for projects with layers.  Let me count mine, there’s the base card, my blue cardstock (love double matting for that thin border), my designer paper, my die cut image and my embellies, that’s five so I guess I qualify.

Ingredients:
Copics
Skin E000, E00, E11, E21 (E02 cheeks)
Lips R81, R85, R89
Hair E21, E23, E25, E27, E29
Outfit BV00, BV11, BV17
Orchids BV20, R00, RV11
Chalks & Powders etc
PanPastel ~ Neutral Grey Tint
Dies, SVGs & Templates etc
Wild Rose Studio ~ Oval Frames
Embellishments
Inks & Paints etc
Spica ~ Blossom, Clear, Lavender, Lilac & Pink
Tim Holtz Distress Ink ~ Black Soot
Papers
Stamps
Challenges


Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday 3 May 2015

But he that dares not grasp the thorn...



May is a busy month for birthdays and my first card of the month is for a female friend, so I’ve used the lovely Single Rose Bride from Sami Stamps.


This image practically screams elegant to me but in a lovely simple way so I had to go CAS with the card so off I went looking for a suitably CAS sketch to use.  Instead I found the colour inspiration over at Addicted to CAS and realised I didn’t need a sketch, just those colours and my image, nothing more, and I love the result.

I’ve embossed the image rather than colouring it to go with my CAS but elegant feel.  Over at As You Like It they are asking which style of embossing is your favourite.  I love wet embossing, I love the raised texture it creates and I love the different colours, particularly the metallic ones.  Funny that wet embossing is my favourite when I have no more than 20 pots of embossing powders but I must own at least ten times as many embossing folders, so goes the contradictory nature of a crafter!

As my card features a female image and is for a female friend I am also entering it in the current challenge over at Come and Get It.

Ingredients:
Chalks & Powders etc
Papers
Stamps
Challenges

Thanks for stopping by!