Watercolour Class Day 1 - another project

Here's a sample I did for the Vibrant Watercolor Wash technique in the On-line Watercolor class I'm taking (link on sidebar).  I used Distress markers and the paper is white shimmer.  The stamp is one of Fred B. Mullett's stamps from nature prints, and the sentiment is Stampotique.  The stamps are embossed in black, except on the notecard (Memory Box in squash), which are stamped in Soft Olive (Hero Arts Shadow ink).  I love this technique and will try it again.  It is really quick and easy.  I am enjoying this class so far, and learning new things, which is always fun.

Fredly Feather

Hello!  I had a few stolen moments this evening and a few minutes' quiet time at my stamp table seemed the perfect way to decompress after a long day and tiring commute.  I thought I might sift through my stash of pre-cut card projects from my days as a Stampin' Up demonstrator.  I have a few of these around, leftover from classes or workshops.  Well, the intended project is lost to the mists of time, but it's fun to think of something else.  Actually, I think this project was from a Father's Day card workshop from years ago and I think this one was some sort of sunset safari scene.  I no longer have those stamps, but I was inspired by this piece of glossy cardstock to get out my brayer and a multicolour ink pad (Winter Sky - Adirondack ink pad from Ranger) and add some colour.  The colours have run together somewhat, so I added some extra green in the way of Oregano (Adirondack from Ranger) at the bottom.  Because these are all dye inks, they were dry in no time and ready to be stamped on.  I wanted a solid image I could emboss and what better place to turn than my drawer of Fred B. Mullett's stamps from nature prints.  I chose this beautiful feather and embossed it with Hematite, Liquid Platinum and a bit of Antique Gold at the top.  It's on a True Thyme card base with a scrap of some sort of patterned paper that happened to be on my stamp desk at my finger tips (despite a massive tidy last week).  It was meant to be on this card I guess!  The card base is stamped with a script background stamp from Stampers Anonymous, also stamped in Oregano ink.  I edged the pieces of cardstock with that same Oregano ink.  I thought this card might be suitable for a masculine birthday or a sympathy card so I have left it unglittered (if you don't count the little bit of white gold glitter in my gold embossing powder - a great tip from Heather Hayley).

This went together so quickly I think I might see what else is in that drawer of "ripening" projects.  I'm sure there are some treasures waiting to be stamped.  Why don't you have a rummage in your scraps and make a quick card.  It can be fun to see what you can make with just a few things you might have on hand.

Happy stamping!

October Stamping Challenge #1

Here's my first card for my October Stamping Challenge (see this post for the details).  I used a pre-done focal image that was a reject for a class sample at Heather's.  It's stamped on kraft with a leaf image from Sunshine Designs and painted with Twinkling H20s.  It's layered on kraft, and then on blue shimmer.  The card base was cut new, but the accent strip was from the pile next to the paper cutter, so counts as a scrap.  Should I confess to the three additional scraps I generated for this card by cutting and rejecting accent strips?  Probably not.  The new stamp I used was the background stamp - a lovely stamp from nature prints by Fred B. Mullett.  Sorry about the mustard coloured watermark on the card, and the terrible scan.  Boy, Sauron the Scanner has really started doing terrible things to my cards.  On my monitor it looks like I used my card to blot bacon.  In real life it is much less blotchy and not bad looking.  Unfortunately, it's bed time and I don't have time to figure out how to change the font colour on the watermark or threaten and/or cajole the scanner into submission.

This card did squeak in under 15 minutes, but I am going to have to be a lot more decisive or start cheating change the rules on future projects since I used the whole 15 minutes for the layout on this one considering the focal panel was completely done.  All I had to do there was doodle the border.

Hope you found some time to stamp today too! 

Keep Calm....

Tee hee!  I fell in love with this stamp the moment I saw it, and it didn't take long to succumb to its charms.  It's one from Fred B Mullett and I've stamped it here on red cardstock and embossed it with white embossing powder for that (almost) iconic look.  I trimmed it closely then popped it up on a piece of white shimmer cardstock, then layered on matching (but textured) red cardstock.  This was then taped to a card base in pastel aqua.

I love this message, both the original sentiment, and the lovely pun.  My friend tries to tell me that puns are the lowest form of humour, maybe she's right, but I just can't believe that.  Puns are just too funny!

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you are enjoying your summer.

Non-stamping related.  We had a great long weekend last weekend (Canada Day was on Sunday, so Monday was a holiday).  The family went camping to Murphy's Point Provincial Park, which is on Big Rideau Lake.  We had a great camp site, which had a nice place for a hammock.  We took the kids to see the fireworks in Perth on Sunday night and they loved it.  (We all did!)  It was their first time seeing the fireworks and the volunteer fire department in Perth put on a spectacular show.  It was lovely to see their rapt faces.  This weekend is shaping up to be  a good one too, with a stamp class at Heather's this morning and then my brother's family over for a barbecue this afternoon.

Creative Chemistry Days 7-10

Day 7 (l-r): Nostalgic Batik,
Rusted Enamel, Distress Powder Resist

 Hello!  Here are the rest of the tags I made to go with the Creative Chemistry class with Tim Holtz that I took on line.  I really, really enjoyed it! 

Some of my favourites are the Rusted Enamel (can't wait to try that in different colours) and the distress powder resist - isn't that fabulous with my big Fred B Mullett fish!  I love the colours.  And I just got a wonderful bubble stamp at Heather's for the background by Ryn Designs. For that resist I used some sprays in shades of red.  Scrumptious!  I also loved the perfect pearls and am going to get them out far more often. 

Thanks for stopping by!  Now I'm off to clean up the aftermath in my stamping room.  I had hoped the elves would do it while I was out at work, but as usual, they didn't. 

Day 8 (l-r): Paint Dabber Resist, Crackle
Paint Resist, Shattered Stains

Day 9 (l-r):  Perfect Distress Mist,
Perfect Distress, Perfect Splatter Distress



Day 10: Rock Candy Distress Stickles



Another Japanese paper card

As I was writing my last post, I remembered I had wanted to try this card with a black background for my vase and branch.  Ignoring my to-do list, I set to it and came up with this while all the stuff was still out.  (Blithely ignoring the fact that this state is likely to continue indefinitely....)

I used Brilliance Coffee Bean ink for the branch and Brilliance Pearlescent beige for the flowers (branch and flowers - Impress Rubber Stamps).  I tried adding in some light blue flowers in pigment ink and didn't like a blob, which I tried to scrape off, causing a smudge and necessitating some punched butterflies (a.k.a. Stampers' All-Purpose Concealer).  I may whip up a few more like this as I have enough for at least 3 more in black with blue and brown accents . 

The background stamp is a calligraphy stamp from Fred B Mullett, stamped in Bordering Blue (RIP; BTW I found a whole package, unopened!  Yippee!  I can downgrade its status from Perma-Hoard to Short Rations.) 

Twinkling ATC

Here's an ATC I made for the Creative Imaginations Luminarte Raffle described here. Basically, you send in your ATC and cross your fingers.

I recently picked up the newest sets of Twinklings, this ATC uses all the colours from the Autumn Brilliance set: Mystique, Harvest Sol, Spanish Moss, Raspberry Wine, Golden Nugget, and Desert Clay.

I started by stamping the leaf (Fred B. Mullett) in an Adirondack multicolour ink on some 130 lb cardstock, and clear embossing it. (versamark + Adirondack then e.p.) Then painted on patches of the new twinklings, admiring each -these colours are wonderful! Then, ironed away the clear embossing powder and stamped on the tree quote (Quietfire Designs) and embossed it in black. Added some leaves stamped with twinklings, and some crackle effect (Stampendous cube) in black India ink. Added a maple leaf brad from the stash, matted on some black cardstock, and called 'er done.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sympathy Card Revised

My bold move paid off! I like this revised version better than the original here. A minor tweak, but one of the big things we learned in the Intermediate Copic class on the weekend was how to give yourself constructive criticism. Basically, you pretend (a) it's not your card and (b) the person who made it is immune to criticism, in fact revels in it, begs for it, and always wants more. (A and B are usually mutually exclusive, so this is a hard lesson to learn.) My first round of constructive help was to gussy up the card, since I just had the seniment panel and gold bits. No leaves or frame. It just needed a little something else. This is for the church bazaar so I wanted to keep it easy to mail, so that ruled out adding a raspberry bough or similar embellishment (as if! ha!) and of course I couldn't add ribbon to a card to save my life. So fussy little vellum leaves remained an option. Not too bad. The only problem with being your own critic is you don't have all those great ideas for fixing things that other people do. The up side is you're never so mean you can't take it.

Botanical Sympathy Card

Hello!

I stole a bit of stamping time tonight after a long day and it was nice, very nice. I tried out some Fred B. Mullett stamps to make a sympathy card. They are a great background, and conveyed the sort of restful background I was looking for. I used two stamps, Wild Raspberry (the one with multiple leaves) and Lil Salal Leaf, using an old Adirondack multicolour inkpad (Winter Sky). The colours seem to have mostly run together in it, but it does date back to my early days of stamping, so I don't really mind. The colours are still beautiful and a little varied so it doesn't look like just one colour. I embossed the Lil Salal leaf a couple of times on vellum for an accent using Peridot embossing powder. This was the same e.p. I used for the sentiment (by Quietfire Designs). I sponged around the edges with Weathered Wood and Pine Needles. I felt it needed more, so I added a frame and the strip of metallic paper. I have just now ripped off more of the gold paper so it will fit in the frame (do I live on the edge or what!) and it does look better, though I will have to join the frame lines, which will be a risky manoeuvre at best. Wish me luck! (If you hear an anguished groan, you'll know it didn't work.)

Thanks for stopping by.

Summer Card Camp Week 3

Here's the colour combination for this week's project at Summer Card Camp. I was stuck in Christmas theme cards, but couldn't bring myself to do a Christmas card. It's July!

Speaking of July, we have started getting our veggie box from a local farm (Foster's Farm). We've been enjoying the most delicious fresh vegetables. Tonight was beet greens, sauteed in flavoured butter I had in the freezer thanks to Jamie Oliver. The greens were delicious and I swear you feel healthier just cutting them up, inhaling the antioxidants and enjoying the emerald green leaves and ruby stems.

Back to the card. Here I started with a scrap of off white paper, stamped the quote (Fred Mullett) and embossed it in Bavarian Bronze (metallic brown). I thought I would incorporate the stone and butterfly imagery from this poem and stamped my Stampotique stone (large and small sides) here and there in Lake Mist. I antiqued the edges a bit with distress ink and matted it on some brown card and some medium brown Bazzill. The card base is 3 1/4" x 6 1/2" and stamped with a butterfly and the word Papillon (both Quietfire Designs). I used a bit of fancy Japanese paper for red accent behind. More red elements are the red eyelets (I knew they would eventually find a home on a project!), some crochet cotton and a button. The button was a late-game addition, added on this morning before I went to work. This description makes it sound like the card came together in a hurry and part of some master plan, but really it came together like all the others, trial and error, and hemming and hawing, trying different things. I like how the butterflies came out - stamped in Toffee versafine, and the lovely "papillon" from QF, hand lettered by the owner, Suzanne Cannon. A long time ago I dabbled in calligraphy and have always loved it. As for that poem, well, it came in a lovely parcel of Fred Mullett stamps, as the English translation to the Japanese calligraphy stamp I bought. I presume someone more cultured than me would be able to plumb the depths of that poem, but for me it was the ideal shape for this card, and had the words "stone" and "butterfly". More opportunistic than cultured, granted. Still, maybe one of my readers will enlighten me. In the meantime, I'm pleased with how this turned out even if I don't have the faintest idea who I'd give it to.

Well, off to enjoy an episode or two of Game of Thrones with hubby. Sean Bean....now there's a reason to pay for extended cable!

Serene Birthday Card (or How to Hide Mistakes)

Hello! I made this card for the January challenge at Inkredible Stampers, which was to make a "golden birthday" card. Your golden birthday is the one where you turn the same age as the date. I passed mine a while ago, so I just used a birthday theme with gold elements.

I started off with the black panel, stamping it in Memories Soft Gold using the Cornish Heritage Farms Spanish Script backgrounder. Then, I added that beautiful leaf stamp (Wild Raspberry, Fred B Mullett) and embossed it in gold. Fred B Mullett has beautiful stamps from nature prints, lots of botanicals and vegetables, as well as fish and other sea creatures. They're gorgeous. Anyway, back to the card. I stamped the happy birthday (A Muse) and embossed it too, and mounted all on a gold mat. I thought this mossy tsumugi card base was nice, but when I folded it, it cracked, so I covered it up with some tissue tape (Tim Holtz). I stamped the card base in versamark with the same wild raspberry leaves, and added a strip of plum textured paper. I like to keep strips like this for accents, and not just because I can't bear to part with the smallest pieces of my favourite paper. Now, having introduced purple, I felt compelled to follow the rule of threes, so I added some eggplant dimensional pearls. Have you spotted them? No? Well, that's because they really blobbed out into enormous blobs in the top left corner, so I applied a Tim Holtz metal corner. (Two actually, another on the bottom left, but it was too much so I pried if off, with some difficulty I might add). During all this, the other smaller dots of eggplant dimensional pearls under the happy birthday got smudged, so I scraped them off too and covered up the damage with mushroom dimensional pearls instead. Take that rule of three! Take that.

Thanks for stopping by!

Adoration of the Magi

Here's my entry for the December challenge at Inkurable Stampers. I was very fortunate to be chosen as last month's winner of the international entries (thank you!) and a lovely stamp set from Tarisota Stamps will be on it's way to me all the way from Australia. I will be sure to post something when I get it. Thank you Sarah and Tarisota!!!

The theme this month is one-layer cards, with minimal embellishments. We were allowed to mount our layer onto a base, so I did that, since I like the framing effect. I wanted to use the Fred Mullet fish stamp (Pompano) that my mother brought me, and I was fooling around with it, colouring with markers direct to rubber, and one thing led to another and the next thing I knew, I had 3 Wise Fish , and they had to be following a star. So one emergency run to my local stamp store for a star fish later (and Heather didn't let me down!), I had my pisciform magi following the star. I must give apologies to Jo Capper-Sandon, as I'm sure I was led down this creative path by this wonderful Three Bee Kings card.

A few more notes about this card: the starfish is a Michael Strong stamp, stamped in Wild Honey, and coloured in with the same using a blender pen. The fish were coloured with Tombow markers, and the coral is actually from a gemstone cube (Stampendous), as is the "water", just a different side of the cube. There is a fan coral stamp too (Coronado Island). The crowns are by Tim Holtz - Stampers Anonymous and Stampin' Up and the sentiment is from Cornish Heritage Farms. I'm irked that it's crooked - my pilot test was straight, but this wound up crooked. I hoped it wasn't too bad, but my mother noticed right away, which goes to show you that no matter how old you get, you still can't sneak things past your mother. As for embellishments, there are platinum liquid pearl bubbles, distress stickles on the star and sand, and glossy accents on the eyes. If I were to do this card again (and this was effort number 3 or 4, so I was quite tired of colouring the fish with the 5 markers I felt it needed), I would mask the crowns. And get the words straight.

I'm not sure if I'll send this out. I don't usually send Epiphany cards, but this one might have to get used, if I could bear to part with it. I do have a soft spot for it. I showed it to DH, who said it was corny. (Corny?! Harumph. Try post-modern ironic or humorous allegory, but definitely not corny. Double-harumph.)

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Fifth Day of Christmas! Fiiiiiiive golden riiiiiiiings!

Something fishy

Hello! Well, I found my Position-It. It was under quite a few things in a cupboard. I'm glad to have found it - it's just the ticket for positioning stamps quickly and easily.

Well, this card didn't involve any Position-Its, or alignment tools of any kind (as you may be able to tell....). This card started out with me wanting to try my new Lapis Lazuli embossing powder. It's so gorgeous. Soo, soooo gorgeous. It's got blues and coppers in it and it's so beautiful stamped on. Luscious. I think it benefits from a nice solid image so I thought I would do this fish (Fred B. Mullet). I did a bit of a chalk ink background for it, nice soft hues. (I've been working up a Christmas sample so I needed a break from the reds and greens.) I used a variety of colorbox fluid chalks and my mini brayer. I also sponged through some sequin waste and stamped on some crowns. Not sure why the crowns. They were a last-minute addition. I think it was because of the sentiment, which made me start singing "The King of Love, my Shepherd Is" and so crowns just had to go on. Anyway, after I stamped and embossed the fish, I added some colour with Twinkling H20s (Ocean Wave and Indian Copper), and while they were on the go, I coloured up some scrap paper for a sentiment, in a rare flash of forward planning. I also flicked on some drops of Indian Copper onto the card base. The sentiment stamp is from a new Stampin' Up set, as are the crowns. Just before I went to bed last night, I put on the copper dots (Terra Cotta dimensional pearls, Ranger). Not sure about those. On the one hand they are shiny, but on the other hand they are crooked, and on another hand, they frame the picture. 2/3 ain't bad, plus you can't chisel them off. They stay. Not sure when I'll next need an "amour" card with a fish on it, but if such an occasion does arise, I'm certain I wouldn't be able to find one in a store!

Thanks for stopping by!

Getting Inky with my Spade Fish

What a great day today! I got my hair cut and popped in to the art store on my way home to get some paper to try something I read about on Fred B Mullett's website. While I was there, I found some lovely Japanese paper, which I used on this card (the line-y one in the background). This afternoon, my girlfriends and I were at the church making dinner for a women's shelter. The shelter had a big fire in December and their kitchen has been out of commission so various parishes in the city have been providing meals. Our parish has Saturdays. Today we made Nigella's mini meatloaves (totally delicious), Nigella's New Orleans coleslaw (ditto), buttermilk mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. For dessert we cut up fresh fruit and made Grizzly bars (a family recipe that roughly translates chocolate chip cookies into a square or bar, or slice if you happen to be reading this in the UK, and- wouldn't that be a thrill for me!) Talk about the perfect comfort food meal, just right for this cold, grey, wet day. My family just loves those mini meatloaves, I think it's because they get a nice crunchy outside and are not too mushy in the middle. Also, my regular meatloaf frequently conceals grated zucchini, hmmm perhaps the mushiness culprit..... They also freeze beautifully if you are the sort that likes to know you have an emergency dinner in the freezer that everyone will eat.

Anyway, back to the card! I had been experimenting with this fish (Spade Fish, Fred B Mullett) and some different things, and found a line of experimentation worth pursuing. I stamped the fish in versamark on irridescent gold shimmer paper (the paper is white, but has a gold irridescent shimmer - it's the one we used at Heather's on the Hothouse Hibiscus class). I embossed the fish in Psychedelic embossing powder, heating different portions differently to get the different colours to show up. (If you try at home, stop when you get to red - this is the last colour before it goes flat.) After it was embossed, I applied shades of blue and green distress ink with my blending tool and then spritzed with water, flinging on some larger droplets and let it dry. I added some definition to the eye with a navy marker. The card base is Handsome Hunter stamped with a wonderful swirly dot background (Fluff- Impression Obsession). The fish and the Japanese paper are mounted on Night of Navy. There is a nice blue-gray piece of tsumugi paper in there too. I spied an interesting accent on my ribbon hanger and trimmed it to fit, rearranging some of the pieces to suit the layout. It's a Fancy Pants glitter embellishment in green. I didn't find a way to get it off the backing, so I don't think it can come off. If you do know a way to get it off, let me know because I have another one. I left this sentiment-free, suitable for multiple occasions (Congratulations Fishmongery Graduate, Condolences for the One that Got Away, etc.).

In other news, DH returned our monitor and got a different one that is much better at showing colours and doesn't blind me with it's brightness. I can now enjoy blogging and emailing again. Yay!!! Thank you DH!!!