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

Valentine Heart Card

I thought I would share a card I made for Valentines. Most of the work has been done by using Lifestyle Crafts heart shaped dies :)

My base was made by folding red cs and carefully lining up the fold with the top of the Nesting Lace Hearts die so that instead of getting two hearts I retained the fold. Next I cut a black Nesting Scallop Heart followed by a red Heart Doily (actually that die is what started this card :)) , an itty bitty Nesting Eyelet Heart and then a regular Nesting Heart.

I used some stamps but of course at this moment forget which brands lol, . . . I stamped the base layer and the top layer with Fired Brick distress ink. The sentiment was stamped with black archival. I coloured some I Am Roses with Dylusions and then sprayed them with home made shimmer spray.

I make the spray I use the most with Pearl-Ex in Macro Pearl, Micro Pearl and Pearl White. I have a 100ml bottle I use to make up the spray  because I use it so much lol. I have to say I usually add double Macro Pearl because I love it's bling bling bling effect lol. As Pearl-Ex needs a binder added I usually start with warm water and add either  Gum Arabic or or a feww drops of Glossy Accents and give it a good shake before adding any pearls.

I finished the card by adhering all the layers together with double sided tape, placing the flowers and adding some twizzles (the flower stems twisted around a paintbrush handle or an awl) and gluing them down with Glossy Accents. To finish off I added some Black Enamel Accents spots.

My only beef with the card is next time I make one I need to either have it open at the side or alter the direction of the stamping and element placement as  this card opens to sit on the side . . . oops!

Anyways Thanks For stopping by :)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

I am submitting this at;
Crafty Catz - Anything But a Square
Simon Says Stamp - Have a Heart
Make It Monday - Anything Goes
One Stop Craft Challenge - Anything Goes
Joyful Stamper - Inspire Me Fridays  - Anything Goes
The Pink Elephant - Love is in the Air

Butterfly Birthday Card

Today I am sharing the purple card I talked about in a previous post. This was nice and easy to make. I used Distress Stains on lightly misted watercolour paper. I started with Seedless Preserves, then Dusty Concord followed by Shaded Lilac. I made sure to overlap each colour a little bit. I laid down a good amount of each colour and then blended with my finger from darkest to lighest and then from lightest to darkest.

Once dried with the heat tool I flicked water over the top, waited around 10-15 seconds and then mopped up the excess water with paper towel before drying with a heat tool. I coloured a small scrap of paper in the same colours and used a Carl punch to cut a butterfly.

I stamped my sentiment with a Hero Arts stamp and used silver embossing powder. When I heated the embossing powder it melted into the back ground :S. I don't know if it was becaue of the watercolour paper or if it was because they powder was some old stuff my mum gave me lol. I cut a V at the end and then using another Carl punch I cut some mini suns out, as you can see I cut too close to the edge with one :(

I used foam squares to adhere the strip to my white card base and Glossy Accents to adhere the butterfly. I then used a Viva Decor Pearl Pen in Silver to decorate the card and butterfly with some dots.

Well this has to be the cleanest and simplest card I have made :) I really love this one lol.
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

I am sharing this on:
Simon Says Stamp
Make It Monday
Joyful Stamper - Inspire Me Fridays
One Stop Craft Challenge

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

My first canvas Part 1

I am doing my first canvas project as the title suggests. I have chosen to use a Mont Marte canvas panel rather than a proper canvas as I find it hard to work with a proper canvas due to them always seeming to sink in the middle and not knowing how to tighten them lol. I might learn how one day but for now the canvas panel suits my purpose as it's nice and sturdy!

 The panels are pre primed and uber cheap. Only $2.50au for 2 at my local cheapy shop.

I started with distress stains in stormy sky, old paper, dusty concord, aged mahogany, gathered twigs and seedless preserves. I started by lightly misting my canvas and laying down colour in random places minus the gathered twigs. I then misted over the top of this and let my distess wick out and then encouraged the colours to move about more by tilting the canvas in different directions. 

I started to dry the inks and then took some paper towel and blotted the entire canvas... Oops. I had really liked the effect I gained but I lost it by using the paper towel haha. So... I dried the entire canvas and then reapplied the distress stains again lol. After drying again I flicked with water to get some nice splotches happening.

I then took the gathered twigs stain and made sure it was nice and juicy before swiping it along an edge of the canvas. I misted the stain and let it run and drip down the canvas. I repeated this on the other three sides.

Following on from this I chose the same inks as the distress stains (except the gathered twigs) and my blending tool and went over each colour on the canvas to bring them out a bit more. I then used vintage photo with my blending tool heavily around the edges of the canvas and lightly pulled the colour into the centre to give more of a distressed feel.

By now you should be getting the feeling that I love layers lol. Next up we have my favourite permanent ink stamp (it was stazon til I tried archival, swoon), archival in jet black. Using a tip I learnt from Tim Holtz I swiped my pad across my stamps to give a more faded look and stamped a bunch of Stampers Anonymous and KaiserCraft stamps onto my background. As usual I stamped a few upside down rofl. Fortunately for me unless you look really close you can't tell ;)

Stamps used include Stampers Anonymous Steampunk, Urban Tapestry (the speckle stamp, I had also used it with gathered twigs just before I started stamping with archival... oops forgot that bit lol),  Going Somewhere and The Journey rubber cling set not to be confused with the Acrylic set... I am asking myself why one company would give two totally different stamp sets the same name lol... From KaiserCraft I used Sears & Son.

Next up I used my picket fence stain swiped over some stamps stamps from the All Aboard Technique Tuesday stamp set. I stamped each one and allowed to soak in a bit so the white wasn't too harsh and then blotted any larger wet spots and dried with my heat tool. I also added some more of the blueprint stamp from steampunk and the alphabet stamp from going somwhere.

And that's my base done. I have to say my colours are much more subdued in real life. The flash kind of brightens everything up lol. Tried no flash but it made everything barely seeable lol. What cann you do? I didn't choose the colours for this project, my BF did as it is a present for him so I thought I'd hand him my distress and say pick lol. As always the colours work great together :) It does present the challenge of where do I go from here though lol...

What I do k ow is I want more of these canvases, they are so easy and fun to work with and the possibilities are endless. I'd really like to make one in some of the pretty pretty new distress colours.
Any way sorry for the mega long post. Maybe I should have split my explanation into 2 posts!

Happy Scrappin'
Purple

I am sharing this on;
Make It Monday