Large Flower Background And Flutter Trees

Hiya, long time no talk . . . My cat really did it this time :( She knocked a pretty big cup full of water all over my laptop and while it still works not all the keys work properly lol. So I have to use a combination of laptop and tablet to do a post and well most days it's just too much work lol. Anyways the challenge at Eclectic Ellapu for the Purples this time is Birthdays with Butterflies. If You didn't guess I picked that one ;) Not many pics this week as that's just too much work switching constantly between pad n lappy lol.

So because I just got my Inktense pencils and some new spellbinders dies I thought I would combine the two. The dies I used are In'spire Celebration and Flutter Tree D'lites. For a full list of suplies look in the labels. The copious amounts of cutting were done in my Ebosser.

1. Cut 6 sets of trees, butterflies and sentiments from plain cs
2. Stamp background and then position tree and sentiment, die cut
3. Colour the background with a watercolour medium ( I used my new inktense set squeal), I hadnt kept my middle tree pieces but I decided the finished card needed them and went a hunting lol. Next time I will make sure to colour these at the same time too.
4. Glue the 6 trees together plus the stamped tree, glue 3 sentiments plus the stamped one together.
5. Once you have trimmed your background cut a card base to measure and then go over the edges of the base and background with white Adirondack Paint Dabber
6. Adhere background to base and then add the tree and sentiment.
7. The butterfly dies join two together at a time so what I did for these was turn my stamp stamp side up and work out roughly where I wanted the butterflies and pressed them onto the stamp then matched up the lines on the background.

The inspiration for this card came from one Jennifer McGuire posted on her blog a few months ago. She only used a sentiment but I thought this is so cool it could work with anything :)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Sweet Treats Gate Fold Flip Card with A Little Whimsy

This time at Eclectic Ellapu the challenge is Birthday. I made this card for little miss's 10th birthday. I used KaiserCrafts Sweet Treats stack for all the papers. The card is a Gate Fold with a flip panel and a pocket.

 I started with a piece of A4 white cardstock. I used my Martha Stewart Scoreboard to work out where my folds needed to be and then cut the two unneeded portions off with scissors. I inked around all the edges inside and out with picked raspberries distress ink.

 I then chose two coordinating papers and cut panels for the card and inked around them as well.

 I coloured this whimsy stamp with watercolour but I forget which medium lol, it was a freebie from a magazine and is slightly smaller than the rubber mount version. I used my Lifestyle Crafts Nesting Circles and then from the same paper I used for the inside panels I cut a Spellbinders Butterfly Circle, again inking the edges with picked raspberries.

 Front panels before the image is added.

 I cut some tattered banners and used my blending tool to add some picked raspberries. I then stamped in picked raspberries as well.

 This is the flip panel before you lift it stamped with carious sentiments.

 The open flip panel with a more stamping and a quickly put together pocket for some money.

All finished with the Image and sentiments added with foam tape. I am thinking I used a combination of Derwent Inktense and Watercolour pencils but don't quote me!
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

A little Sketchy With Cosmo Cricket

 

I started with this image that I stamped in Archival and coloured with a mix of Inktense and Staedler watercolour pencils. I then chose three patterned papers from the Crate Papers Clementine stack to follow this sketch with. I bought this stack to challenge myself to use papers I wouldn't normally.

For the background layer I chose chevrons, my strip is stripes and instead of a wavy border I chose a piece of paper from the stack that had skinny border like images on it and cut out the one with the flowers and adhered it to the stripy paper. I added a teeny dot of red Liquid Pearls to the middle of each of those flowers.

 

 Next I chose a red and a green Prima flower and glued them together and onto the card. I added  some perfect pearls to the middle of them too. Then I had a teeny accident and had to add the green flower which made the card unbalanced so I added the red one as well and added liquid pearls to the middle of these too lol. I hand cut the banner and used my Martha Stewart score board to score where wanted the folds to be. I used a triple layer of foam tape in the middle to pop it off the card. The sentiment is from Mpress stamped with Vermillion archival.

Happy Scrappin' 

Purple

I am entering this here:

Sketch and Stash - Sketch

613 Avenue Create - Anything Goes/With Flowers

One Stop Craft Challenge - Birthdays

Simon Says Stamp And Show - Anything Goes

Make It Monday - Anything Goes 

Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Birthday 

Challenges 4 Everybody - Anything Goes

A Little Experimentation Goes a Long Way

As I said in my previous post I was going to play some more and share the results. I have used stains, watercolour pencils and gelatos and I have a fair few things to share. I am sharing them before I turn them into cards. I think I am getting the hang of the gelatos too :) I have made some very light samples but I can always add more colour if I wish (good thing I have been taking notes on the back of the samples lol).

 Let's start with gelatos. My first attempt was to wet the watercolour paper first, then lay down the colour spritz again and blend with my finger . . . it didn't work very well (might be more to do with the colours I used lol) so I tried again with a brush. That's the sample on the bottom left. Colours used for these samples are Black Licorice, Chocolate and Butterscotch.

For the top sample I applied dry and spritzed three puddles of water on my mat. I started at black and worked to lightest blending with a paintbrush. I added a little too much water in some places so I used a wet brush directly to the gelato I needed to fix the problem . I had so much colour left on my mat that I got sick of wasting it and started using the lefovers on leftover scraps of watercolour paper. That's the image on the bottom right.

The next set were all made when I applied gelatos to a wet surface and blended with a paintbrush for the first gen (top pic). These colours seemed to go on very thick and allowed me to make the original plus two more samples. Colours are Blueberry, Boysenberry and Grape. The second gen, to the right, was made swiping the colours straight off the craft mat and third gen I sprizted the leftovers then applied them to the cs for the third gen pale look on the bottom.

The following two were made at the same time. I applied gelato to my ranger craft mat and spritzed with water to make a light wash. These have only one coat but If I had wanted darker colours I could have just made one and dried in between layers to darken the colours. I used the metallics in Melon, Grape and Mint.

Next up we have a couple done with distress stains. I used three colours for each, spritzed with water and blended them with my finger. When I blend using my finger I tend to work from lightest to darkest then flip and work from lightest to darkest to work the colours into each other and smooth them out. The top one uses Peacock Feathers, Evergreen Bough and Bundled Sage and has been flicked with water to get the cool droplet effect. The bottom one uses Aged Mahogany, Fired Brick and Worn Lipstick.

I only have two Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists and for ome reason one of mine looked nowhere near the colour on the back :( It was supposed to be a really pretty pink but instead there was barely any colour there at all lol. The colour was supposed to be pink bubblegum. I added 20 drops of picked raspberry reinker and a spritz of Dylusions in Postbox Red. I ended up with a colour a bit darker than the colour I was supposed to have but very pretty none the less :)

I used a paintbrush dipped in the bottle and started painting each colour on from their respective ends and blended with my finger in the middle. The yellow is Lemon Zest.

Onto Derwent Watercolour pencils. Each sample uses the same set of colours applied directly to dry paper. The colours are 2, 7, 8, 10 and 12. I spritzed the top one with water then used my finger to blend the colours. I could have added more red but liked the washed out effect and decided to lave it as. The bottom one was blended with the Tim Holtz Waterbrush.

The top picture uses the colours 40, 43, 44, 45, 46 and 47. I used a waterbrush and pulled colour directly from the pencils. I really like this technique. The middle pic uses 18, 21, 22, 24 and 25. I coloured right on the paper for this one and blended with a waterbrush. I spilled a  drop of the mist I mixed onto this one so I decided to make the best of it and used  the spray tube from the bottle to add some drips and lines, sprized again and rand some paper towel over the top to get that faded look.

The bottom pic uses 37, 38, 39, 40 and 44 coloured directly yo the paper. Not sure why I added this pic in the bunch because I cannot remember how I did it lmao.

This next pic uses inktense pencils. I used 1200, 1300 and 1400 straight from the pencil with the waterbrush for the top image and for the bottom one I used the pencils coloured right onto a tag and blended with the waterbrush. As you can see it is very streaky compared o others so water colour paper is definitely best.

I realised as I was typing this that i forgot to do a sample using the waterbrush from the gelato then onto the paper but anyways I am sure you get the idea. Hope this helps you in some way.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

A Little Inspiration and Some Experimentation

I was recently looking at a Simon Says Stamp Blog post featuring Jennifer Mcguire and decided to try my own version of what she did in the video. I also thought I would try different mediums as well :) I am not so good at leaving loads of "white space" so to speak though so mine in general are a little busier.

First up I thought I would share the ones I did with my 12 pencil set of Inktense. (The 72 set is winging it's way from England as we speak as they are much cheaper there lol:)). I have made 2 cards so far with the inktense though I have a couple of extra pieces to use up as well. I was seeing what combos I could make with the small set.

Using  Bark 2000, Baked Earth 1800 and Tangerine 0300 I coloured on a strip of Crafters Choice watercolour paper making sure to over lap each colour. I worked from darkest to lightest. I then used my faber castell water brush starting at the dark end and working my way to the tangerine. As I had laid down plenty of colour they blended nicely and my orange started to take on a brownish hue. It wasn't as dark as I wanted so I dried the strip then added more colour using my waterbrush directly onto the pencils then the paper. These colours made for a very autumnal looking strip of paper.

I cut a wide  V shape from one end of the strip to make a banner and then stamped with perfect medium and embossed with a bronze embossing powder. I used a Carl punch to punch some maple leaves from around the banner. I also cut a couple from the leftover banner bits. I used these to create a falling leaf effect down the card. I used foam squares behind the banner to raise it off the card. I decorated using some Viva Decor Pearl Pen in dark brown.

The next card I made a nice rainbow effect by using three totally different colours, Sun Yellow 0200, Fucshia 0700 and My fave from this set of 12, Teal Green 1300. Again I started by by laying down my colours on the strip of paper and overlapping slightly. Pink then yellow followed by the teal. I found my Tim Holtz water brush finally... Yay! So used that to start blending from pink to yellow. Got a nice orange in the middle by overlapping the colours and a nice light green when blending the yellow n teal.

 I stamped using Perfect Medium for the sentiment and switched to Versamark for the presents. I learnt the hard way with the presents to colour first and then stamp over the top otherwise the inktense stays on the Hero Arts White embossing powder lol. The Happy Birthday stamps from both cards are from Hero Arts Birthday Sayings.

For the card base I used a Tim Holtz Swirl embossing folder on the front and then spritzed with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Pink Bubblegum (mine looks nothing like the back of the bottle : (. . .) and Lemon Zest as well as took the sprayer out of the bottle to drop a few small droplets down.
I then took my inktense pencils and used the Tim Holtz waterbrush on them one colour a time (works great for this technique) and flicked them over the front of the card ( I did a little flicking inside but forgot to take a pic of that lol). I also spritzed the banner with the Lemon Zest.

Sorry about some of the pics. I took some with my phone and they are shocking! Ended up grabbing my proper cam out so I could show decent pics of the finished product. Next up I again adhered the banner with foam squares as well as the presents on the banner. For the sentiment inside that I forgot to snap (cards already been given to a young lass celebrating her 13th birthday) I used Mustard Seed Distress Marker in the middle, Peacock Feathers distress pad on one side and Picked Raspberries on the other. Hope they release the 12 new colours in markers soon!

I have also tried this with distress stains and love the effect that gives and have a really pretty card to share in purples next. Also tried gelatos but was not so happy with how that turned out, need to play some more as I think I am using to much water. It's such a fun and easy technique I am going to try it with all the blendable media I can :). I also have the 72 set off the regular derwent watercolours so will use them as well for sure. Of course the colours will be more muted than the inktense but that can be pretty too!

Happy Scrappin'
Purple

I am submitting this at;
Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes
Joyful Stamper - Anything Goes
Make It Monday - Anything Goes
Artistic Inspirations - Embossing/Anything Goes

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 11

Wow another challenging one. When I decided to pack the colour in I didn't realise how hard it would be to still get the Christmas feel across lol. Hopefully I succeeded in making something both different and bright and colourful that still conveys "I'm a Christmas card!"  Please let me know if I succeeded! As ever here is the inspiration behind my 11th card, T!m's tag...

Card 11


Yay last post I need to write up :) I had fun using my new pencils for this technique!

My first step was too grab an A4 sheet of cardstock and randomly colour small areas of colour with my new  Derwent Inktense pencils. The first time I tried to be random in size and colour and it didn't work very well with small stamps. So then I started again and coloured random sized rectangles/squares.

I then used my aqua painter to make the colours more water colour like.

I used various stamps from Inkadinkado and Stampin' up til I found an image I liked. I went with one from Stampin' Up. I used perfect medium on the stamp and stamped the image onto my pretty paper. I covered this with black embossing powder and heat set from the underside of the cs. I then cut around my images.

At this point I have to say I started with the leaves like T!m did but I just wasn't feeling it lol. And I scrapped it and put the leaves aside for another project. The pencils inspired this idea.

I then grabbed a snowflake from the same set and stamped a lot of them in small spaces left from where I had cut things out. Embossed them in black and used Lifestyle Crafts circle and scallop circle dies to cut around them. I used florist masking tape (my 3m tape was Mia after the other card I used it on lol) to keep the dies in position and ran them through my Cuttlebug.

I grabbed  some shrink plastic. I have have both Poly Shrink and Shrinkies and these both work in the eCraft. I used repostional tape on the piece of plastic and stuck it to my stabiliser. I then opened SCAL 3 and used the three free snowflake images that came with the software. I enlarged them to around 4"/10cm and cut with my eCraft.

I then covered the three snowflakes with Perfect Medium and  UTEE and shrank them with my heat tool.

I moved  them to the side of my craft sheet and reheated them. I used tweezers to flatten the sides and try to straighten them up a little and left them to dry.

I  then made my own glimmer glaze. I used a small amount of Reeves Iridescent medium spritzed with water once or twice and mixed. I then added Multi-Medium Gloss and did some more mixing. Finally I added a  couple of drops ofTumbled Glass Distress Reinker. I started at one and built up to 3 or 4 as I made a full pot. This is now my preferred method for making my glaze. It's a nice subtle sheen. Both Glossy Accents and Triple Thick give a more glossy finish. I like them as well but this is my fave :) I made a divine dried Marigold one the other day.

I painted the back of a piece of semi-gloss cs with my glaze because it's nice and sturdy and thanks to my sister I have tonnes! She got from a recycle place (not quite A4, there is a slice missing from the long edge) and we went halvies :) Very hard to get a decent pic so you will see after the next step :)

I took my Evergreen Bough and distressed around the edges. Sorry this is still not a good photo.. It's coming I promise lol. You will get to see the sparkle and shine!

I grabbed my Pearl Mixative alcohol ink and covered the backs of my snowflakes.

I then decided they needed more and added rock candy Stickles... It didn't give the pop I was after so I added some frosted lace over that.

So I have the background done and as I have a lot of elements I laid them all out til I got the kind of look I was after. I do this quite often when I have a lot to put on a page or a card. I then took a photo. I forget where I wanted things when there are many so a pic helps me remember Just where I want all the little things when I start assembling. Especially If I am working in layers. It also allows me to see where I may want to or need to add dimension.

See that sparkle and shine?!!!! Scrummy lol. As you can see I added the words "On Earth" to go with peace in the pic. I used a scrap of my shimmery cs leftover from the background and I used a recollections double alpha for this and embossed in black again. I also added a white cs background to the large stamped image and distressed the edge with evergreen bough.

I decided to pop out the word Earth with dimensional foam squares and also used some small spots to raise the lower edge of the middle snowflake so it was flush with the stamped image.

I used double sided tape on the small snowflakes and multi-medium matte on the snowflakes with lil dots of foam tape under the middle one as well.

And card is done! Yay. So much colour on a christmas card! It's not what I originally set out to make but it is sooo much better. I am not used to seeing such a bright card lol but I love it. All that sparkle and colour just makes it something special to me...

So this is the last blog I needed to play catch up writing. My 12 cards are all done and dusted, all uploaded to T!m's blog.  I think I did pretty well to get all 12 Cards  done in my first attempt lol. Hope you like this card :)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple