More AI Watercoloring

Hello  -  Today another watercolor piece...you might be seeing them for a while I seem to be hooked on this process.  I am off to Peggy's for another day of stamping and coloring.  This is from our visit last week.

Again, this is done with stamps, tombow markers and a watercolor brush.

Inspired  by and Cased from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSmMlpKKIRo

Thanks for stopping by.

Caffiene Fix

Hi There -

It has been a while since I played at Shopping our Stash.  The challenge this week is to make a coffee related card.  Ellen Hutson's Oh Frappe has been sitting in my new stuff bin for forever.  I had to have it, but I am not much of a coffee drinker, nor do I know many coffee drinkers...so its been waiting. 

I actually made two cards, one more feminine and one more masculine.

Thanks for stopping by!

Just Us Girls 390 Photo Week

Greetings ~

At Just Us Girls this week there is a photo inspiration.  I was drawn to the red, green and yellow on the framed map prints with all that white around the map print and the stark black frame.

I created this with a watercolor wash using crayola watercolors, three Paper Smooches Dainty Flowers cut from white card, along with a white embossed Mama Elephant sentiment and a black card base

Thanks so very much for stopping by!

Color Throwdown 439 Always Fun Challenges 3 Less is More 325

Hello!  One card three challenges, and a few pics of the process along the way.  I wanted to make a few Altenew Majestic Bloom cards to fatten up my card stash.  I pretty much suck at multi layer stamping unless the images are made to exactly line up and few are.  SO what to do with my colorful trash?  Die cut it.

I was inspired by Color Throwdown's color combo of Purple, Red, Yellow and Orange.  I took my for blooms and cut each one with the  Winnie and Walter's Hello die.  Then  holding them all stacked together, I cut four pieces.  I cut another hello from white and then glued once color piece from each of the four flowers to cover the white hello piece.  I added wink of stella and glossy accents and let it dry.

The embossed stripes were inspired by Less is More#325, and  reinforcing a clean and simple design was a second challenge requiring a CAS card the new challenge Always Fun Challenges #3.

While it was drying I decided there had to be a quicker way to get a similar result.  There is, its not quite as colorful due to the size of my starting image...but hey I like it.  I colored up the bloom with three color families on each of the layers.  As a flower it looks horrid, but as a diecut...definitely interesting.  I cut 1 out of the center of one flower, and the other 4 were cut with the die covering only half the flower along the length of the word.

Again wink of stella was added, but instead of all that glossy accents squeezing...I used embossing powder; clear on 4 and silver pearl on the 5th.  The silver pearl gave a muted sentiment but it seemed a bit dull, so it got another layer of embossing over it in clear.

Thanks for hanging in if you got to the bottom of this post!  Have a fab week.

 



 

AI Watercolor Kitten

Hello -

I've been collecting quite a few of the AI Watercolor Series stamps, and last week I finally sat down with a crafty friend to play and practice using them.  My supplies were the stamps, watercolor paper, tombow markers, a stamp positioner, post it notes, fine tipped water brush and stamp blocks.

My friend had quite a few of the smaller foliage and flower stamps as well.  So, between the two of us we were able to get a couple of panels made.  I tossed two pieces of watercolored card which had been used for practice on both the fronts and backs, a third piece has a bad practice run on the back...but the front turned out fine...yep I used it.  So, if you haven't played with these stamps and are planning on it and have absolutely no drawing or painting talent like me, give yourself some practice runs...watch the You Tube videos.

I found these fun once I got past my initial aggravation with my over wetting my scenes.  A barely damp brush was the key for me.  And until I get more used to these, my cards are pretty much CASE's of those presented by Bonnie Krebs.

This one is inspired by this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7LIN0j5r_8

The focal image is made up of several stamps: a stump, a portion of a cat, grasses, several types of leaves, and two sorts of flowers.  This will be a thank you note for a friend who is fond of cats.  I've got another version in mind for my Dad that will have 3 kitties in a field of grasses.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Watercolor note card

Greetings ~

After my trip to California, and my friend Peggy's trip to Texas we hadn't had a crafty day together for about 6 weeks, so it was definitely time.  We tried out some of the AI Watercolor series stamps and got hooked on the process.  I'll be posting those later once I have them made into cards.

Peggy gave me a stamp with an adorable bunny on it.  Easter and (for this California transplant) Springtime are over so the bunny will be awaiting next spring...I did however have to play with it, and thought Peggy might enjoy getting a thank you card made from the bunny stamp.

Just as an aside...hubs wasn't fond of that dark glossy eye; about an hour later he went downstairs and hollered up to me to look outside...there was a sweet little bunny grazing...and it had a big black shiny eye...I couldn't resist asking hubs if he had noticed it.  I'm a brat.

Thanks so much for stopping by! 

Fresh Flutter Die

Greetings!

I've been caught up in the business of hubs for the last 10 days and haven't gotten much crafting done.  So it felt good to get back to my crafty table to put together a card.  I am calling this one clean and layered.  The card is for two challenges - The Card Concept and HLS April Anything goes with dies. 

The photo for the Card Concept challenge is so clean and fresh and light. I was immediately struck by the beautiful white flowers...there needed to be white pops on my card; and that aqua/teal jar.

I created a card front using a SSS stitched rectangle die and inked on some High Dive ink towards the center - closest I have to an aqua shade. I then used Concord and 9th Flutter die from the Floral and Flutter set to die cut the butterfly with some be creative tape on the top.

I then dipped the butterfly die into some Nuvo sparkle dust - very very fine iridescent glitter.  I popped the butterfly onto the inked portion of the card for a pop of white against the aqua inking and added a few iridescent sequins.  The sentiment is from Hero Arts.  The panel was mounted onto a card base of surf blue from SSS leaving just a smidgen of a mat around my focus panel.

Here is a picture without the lights on, you can see the iridescence and the glitter a bit better.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

  

Those Dogs are back

Hi There!

A guy friend of mine from my working days has a birthday coming up.  He is a dog lover so I thought this would be a fun card for him. I even made a matching envelope.  Both are watercolored, and then lightly covered with distress glaze so hopefully they'll make it to his place in good shape.

These were colored with water color pencils, and the eyes were dabbed with glossy accents for shine and the noses covered with black pico embellisher for a shine and some texture.  I am entering this to  ATSM's Make Your Mark .

Have a great day, and thanks for stopping by!

 

Bunny Box

Hello There ~

I've been working on a little project for the crafty gals.  We often make small gift for each other for holidays. I missed St. Patrick's day while I was away.  So I wanted to make something cute for Easter.  I found a You Tube Tutorial for a square match box. I made a small modification to the instructions, and they were pretty easy to make.  I made 12 boxes from 6 12X12 sheets of paper.

If you'd like to see the video it can be found here. The modifications I made were to cut the inside box liner at 2 7/8 inches square and to cut the wrappers at 3 by 9 inches.  This allowed me to make 4 boxes per 2 sheets of 12 X 12 paper. 

I chose a lightly glittered cardstock for the box and a polka dot for the wrapper and liner.  I added grass and 3 Reese's Easter eggs inside the box.  The bunny on top is from Lawn Fawn and the Sentiment is from PTI.

I actually enjoyed making the boxes they came together quite quickly. I hope the gals will like them.

Thanks for stopping by!

Thank you

Greetings !

My bestie sent me a darling card for my birthday last month...even though we did our happy birthday thing while I was in California.  I fell in love with the card she sent me and based my thank you card to her on its colors and image. 

It had a beautiful pink flower on a blue/aqua  backdrop with lots of kind words.  As I looked through challenges, CAS Mix it UP gave me the additional bit of inspiration - inlaid die cutting as well as stamping and heat embossing.  I am also entering this to Double D's Neon/Brights challenge. I love the bright pinks and yellows in the mood board below.

I die cut the thanks first, then pulled it out. Next I stamped and embossed the flower.  It was then masked with some paper as I added some ink with a clarity brush around the flower image.  Next I colored the flower with pencils.  My sentiment was covered in versamark and dipped twice into liquid platinum embossing powder then heated.

Once that was dry, I added a white panel to the card inside with plenty of tape runner so the letters would stick down once I placed them back into the card front.  My last bit of embellishment was to add stickles to the flower petals and center.

I hope she likes the card.

Thanks for stopping by!

  

Muse 210

Hello!

I am getting my Muse card in a bit late in the week but not quite at the last moment.  Anita Bowden is our Muse this week and she provided a sweet anniversary card for us.



I went with her design, but flipped it to portrait style.  My background embossing is large dots, my offset square is die cut double pierced squares from Avery Elle, and my stamps and sentiment come from MFT.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Two Cards Three Challenges

Greetings -  Its been raining here for a couple of days. A cool spell.  I love the rain, so this is happy time for me.  It's also perfect for crafting.

Up first - Fusion with a theme of Easter.  The graphic is below. I was drawn to those glasses filled with jelly beans as the inspiration for my Clean and Simple card.  I used bold colors courtesy of the Zig Clean Color brushes, and topped them with glossy accents for that nice hard shine.

Next up Seize the Birthday with more coloring with the Zig markers. No Toppings this time. This is for a friend of mine whom I worked with in California. She retired and moved ultimately to South Carolina. While in California at her birthday time the spring flowers were long gone; I think now I can get away with a spring flower birthday card for her.

Wink of stella and glossy accents are on the tulip petals.

Lastly both cards are being entered to AAA cards for their theme of CAS Shiny Spring.

Thanks so very much for stopping by!


 

Another Shot at LIM

My last card wasn't exactly CAS for the Less is More challenge- I got wrapped up in the pastels and not the design; so I've given it another go.  The theme is to use 3 pastels, mine are green pink and purple.

The image of the bunny and grass is from Gerda Steiner; it is a digi stamp. I have had good luck printing these with my ink jet printer on Spectrum Noir paper and coloring with Copic's. I have not experienced any printer ink bleeding.  I added the digital sentiment while I was editing the image in Photoshop to put the grass and the bunny together.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

3 Pastels and a Scramble

Hey There!  Today I checked the flickr group to see if there was a scramble...and there was it had less than an hour left. Yikes...but I do love a scramble and this really was one for me.  I had been thinking about the current Less is More Challenge to use 3 pastels and that combined with Cindy's theme of using an oval  made this card come together very quickly.

I used cream colored card stock and clear embossed Hero Arts' Leafy Vine stamp. Then I added very lightly inking with Distress inks in Cracked Pistachio, Milled Lavender, and Work Lipstick.  Once these were kinda dry -- I buffed the card front with a microfiber cloth to remove the ink from the embossing.  Next up a quick liquid platinum embossed sentiment from PTI on vellum.  Lastly I layered the vellum and the card stock and cut the stitched oval from MFT.  I barely off set it on the left side to maintain a fold.  I  cut a snip off the bottom of the back side of the card so it can stand.

ETA: I am also adding this to the Crop Stop March Challenge.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Addicted to Stamps and More

Hey there!  It is Photo Inspiration week at  ATSM this week.  The photo is a stunning study in blue and black.

I love the look of the color bleeding outwards on this image.  It definitely made me want to throw some color onto  some paper.

I grabbed a favorite whimsical butterfly from Hero Arts, stamped it then clear embossed it so I could keep a bit of separation between the wings and the background.  Then I pulled out my Crayola watercolors -- yep Crayola....there is a particular shade of blue that I love in the set.

I added color and dried the panel 4 times by just letting it sit under my laptop's cooling fan. It gives warm air with a very light breeze--not enough to move the color and gives a better effect than the heat gun drying.


Thanks so much for stopping by!