Technique – colouring

Featuring colouring other than watercolouring

Autumn Thanks

Hi Everyone!

I can’t believe it’s November already! Seriously! Where is this year going?

Anyway, there’s a great colour combo over at the Color Throwdown challenge blog this week – red, teal and green!

I inked up my favourite Simon Says Stamp Fractile Leaves, embossed and masked them before doing some simple ink blending with distress oxide inks and regular distress ink. I added some water droplets and then coloured each of the leaves using the same inks.

After cutting out each of the images, I used some of the left over Broken China background to cut out the base of the sentiment. Finally I added a few Nuvo Jewel drops to finish off the card.

I’m also entering this into the current Case This Sketch challenge and also the Simon Says Stamp Flickr Challenge – Thankful.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Pretty Christmas cards

Hi everyone!

I attended my first card making class in the UK for a long time yesterday and it was great fun! Kay Carley was running an all day class for the Craft Barn in Lingfield. Side note: the Craft Barn was where it all began for me many years ago – where I experienced the magic of embossing for the first time, learnt so many techniques and made friends with fellow crafters. I virtually lived there every Saturday and was heartbroken when the owner decided to close. The store was rescued and changed hands before relocating to another local town. It’s now an online-only business but I am glad it still provides some classes at the local community centre. It was sad to go back to Lingfield and see the ‘old place’ all boarded up, but that’s life I guess!

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me and that trip down memory lane. back to the cards…

Kay showed us how to make two cards using her new stamps from Paperartsy. When I saw samples for this class online, I thought the backgrounds had been made using distress inks – we actually used Paperartsy’s Fresco Finish paints. Totally outside my comfort zone but great fun to use and some beautiful colours!!

 For the first card, I followed Kay’s sample colours. I was a bit nervous about outlining the embossed images using distress markers, but that black line really makes the images pop, don’t you think?

 

 

 

 

Kay’s second card followed the same colour theme as her first one, but I decided to try a different palette. Some of these shades remind me so much of distress inks (especially Seedless Preserves and Broken China).

I enjoyed making the backgrounds with the paints – it was great to stamp on the backgrounds and then water colour the images… now I just need to decide if I want to explore this medium a bit more! I particularly like the metallic paint we used for the tree trunks (a bottle may have made its way into my basket!).

Thanks Kay for a great class, and great inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Autumn greetings

Happy Friyay everyone!

I pulled out a rather neglected Penny Black background stamp today and coloured it with some distress inks. The Crushed Olive turned out a little lighter than I originally intended, but I decided to stick with it, rather than try to darken it!

It was quite nerve-racking to cut into the painted background once I had finished it, but I do love the hidden greeting technique and I am glad that I did it!

I’m entering this card into the current Color Throwdown Challenge – plum, rust and olive.

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

So many merry snowmen

Hi there!

I fell in love with Mama Elephant’s ‘So many Snowmen’ stamp the moment I saw the sneak peak on Instagram and snapped it up as soon as I could! I can’t believe it landed on my doormat a week ago and I am only just getting round to stamping it up!

Anyway, it was just as fun to colour as I imagined. I used my Twinkling H2O paints and also my Nuvo Aqua shimmer pen and this card is so shimmery in real life! The die is from Mama Elephant as well and I used ‘Christmas’ from a Simon Says Stamp set.

I’m going to enter this into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge – anything goes.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Love Monster

Hello!

I must confess I was a bit stumped when I saw this week’s Less Is More challenge theme – ‘monsters’. There are loads of cute monster stamps on the market nowadays but I haven’t bought any as I know I just wouldn’t use them…

Then I remembered a very old wood-mounted stamp from Amuse Art Stanps that I bought a decade ago in Boston! Of course, I still have it because I can’t bear to get rid of any of my old rubber stamps!! Anyway, it’s called ‘Love Monster’ – perfect for the challenge theme!

I kept the card very simple as the image is very small – just a bit of soft ink blending and a sentiment banner to anchor the monster image. I also used a Penny Black snowflake frame to add a little more detail to my card.

The theme for the new Casology challenge is ‘cherish’ and I’m going to enter this card for that challenge as well – a quirky take on the theme!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Moonlit Owl

Hi there!

For today’s card, I used the Moonlit Owl die from Sizzix/Tim Holtz. I love owls and have looked at this die a LOT over the past few months. But I couldn’t quite justify buying it…. and then it sold out from my local craft store. I was a bit disappointed, especially as I kept seeing other crafters using the die after it had sold…

Imagine my delight when my local store had one back in stock at the end of last week – AND it was deeply discounted! Of course I snapped it up!

Anyway I used it for my entry into the current Color Throwdown challenge. I just LOVE the colour combo (purple, black and white) this week – so striking!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.