All About the dies

After a 3 day blog hop at Impression Obsession, I have finally decided what my card should look like for the challenge. As a stamper first and foremost, I use dies either as an embellishment (flowers, leaves, buttons, borders) or matting for my stamped images.  So this is quite different for me and the stamping is taking second place, in the background, stamped on an embossing folder.

 



The stamp is CAC Canvas (CC073). The butterflies are made of 2 layers die-cut with the Butterflies die (DIE008-I) one out of lightly colored paper and one out of vellum. The paper has also been stamped with Flourish 2 (H5575) in black ink, but you will have to trust me with this as it is barely visible on the picture.
The sentiment, a first for me, is actually written by my own hand ! Needs must... I didn't have a stamp and didn't fancy putting my embossed card through the printer !

Thanks for coming by,

Inspired by Linda Cain (2)

This week my entry in the Paper Arsty challenge is based on Linda's second project. Although it did not turn out as planned and there were a few accidents along the way, I am quite pleased with the result which is so different to my normal style.

For the background I used the same technique as Linda with Portfolio pastels and stamped a few images from Hot Pick 1112 and 1202. Rather than stencilling I stamped found textures with Fresco white (plastic packaging).

Hope you will like this project !

Inspired by Helen Chilton

Helen is returning to the Paper Artsy blog for a new week of projects. I took inspiration from her layering technique of translucent paint using stencils and stamping on tissue paper for my page. A few niggles along the way... but here it is :

I used a gear stencil (Crafter's workshop) and a stamp from Hot Pick 1206-if you don't recognise it it's because I have glued it on the wrong side (Duh!)-
Rather than painting it with Fresco and a paintbrush I used Cut & Dry and distress as I thought it would be more manageable and I have more colours !

Could do better....

Favorite technique

Time for a new challenge at Impression Obsession on the theme Favorite technique.

Choosing the technique was easy, and so was making the background with the technique. The next stage however...

As per usual, once I had done the background, I didn't want to hide it because I thought it so beautiful. Eventually I decided to use the same stamp in a contrasting color as a topper for my card. I tried gilding flakes on dark blue card, which, predictably looked a mess  (detailed stamp + bonding powder is not a good combination), moved on to mica powders on dark blue, pretty, but I realised dark blue was never going to work with my background's blues !
Then lightbulb moment.... I reversed the color scheme and embossed the stamped image in white, applying watercolor on top. I had several tries with that too... and concluded that to get good results watercolor paper was an absolute necessity. To make my topper more interesting I die-cut it with a Spellbinders Accent die, added a ribbon with a rub-on greeting and some heart gems.

Now for the technique : the background is CAC Ornate (CC077) stamped in Versamark, then colored with pastels (chalks) using cotton balls. I used 3 pastel sticks in dark indigo, ultramarine blue and a vibrant violet, concentrating the dark indigo on all 4 sides of the background. I sprayed a bit of fixative to  avoid smudging.
This is the same technique as the one I used here

I encourage you to try this technique, it's foolproof and the results are so beautiful...

Inspired by Michelle Webb

For my entry for the Paper Artsy challenge I took a little bit of inspiration from 2 of Michelle's projects: Fragile Hearts and Old Door. I didn't go as far as Michelle with the stencils and I didn't apply white on top of the stencilled areas, but I stayed with her choice of green because I tend not to use green (not my favorite colour by far !) and I need to get out of a rut...
You will have to forgive the lighting, but the weather is miserable and I don't have my usual camera.

For stencils I used sequin waste in 2 sizes and a Chickenwire template (Crafter's Workshop).
The stamps are from Hotpicks 1207 (the girls) and 1204 (sentiment, dot texture).

Not sure if I like it but hey it's a learning experience, so honest opinions please...

Pick & Mix challenge

This is the theme of the Country View Craft challenge, their very first one. I thought this would be a good time to try and use more patterned papers and more layers on a card, as I have a tendency to keep to one stamped layer and as a result have a lot of papers lying around unused...

The main image has been stamped in black and coloured with pencils, as has the sentiment.
Then I used some of the paper offcuts to embellish the inside of the card (it also help with balancing the weight from the front).

Quite different from me but I enjoyed making it ! Thanks for coming by,

Inspired by Suzanne Czosek

Well I can't say the Mojo is 100% but there is improvement... Thanks to the Paper Artsy challenge I can follow someone else's inspiration and that make things a lot easier.

I based my entry on Suzz's Vintage Bottle and Springflowers project, but changed a few things, starting by the colour scheme. As this is the back of the binder I altered here, I kept to the pinks and blues, but this time only used sprays.

The main stamps are from PA Hot picks 1203, 1204, 1205 for the bottles and 1206 for the flowers stamped in Archival Ink. I used coloured pencils to put shadows in the bottles and colour in the flowers and butterflies.
Finally, I used a technique I had been itching to try with puff paint and a stencil. Fortunately I had a dry run before attacking the binder with it, because in the end, the only way it would work properly was with a mixture of puff paint and texture paste. When heated the stencilled areas form nicely rounded shapes and the colour is a full tone lighter than the puff paint alone.

Thanks for coming by,