Timeless Tuesday #239 - Pointillism

The Timeless Tuesday Challenge at Flourishes this week is to colour an image using the colouring technique called 'Pointillism' - which is basically creating your image using layers of dots. I have to admit that this is not my most favourite look, but I thought I would give it a try. I am actually quite happy with the way my image turned out. You can learn all about this technique by checking out these two great tutorials: one on Allison Cope's blog here and one by Christine Okken on the Flourishes blog here.

 

Honestly, I thought I would never get this card put together. The colouring and cutting of the image went well, but when it came time to put this image onto a card I kept hitting a brick wall. I just couldn't seem to decide on paper, style, layout etc. (you should see my craft table, it looks like a tsunami hit it). I am happy with the final result since I wanted a fairly clean, not too fussy thank you card.

 I stamped the brown cardstock using the Berry Sweet Frames set, did a little scoring above and below the sentiment and added a little textural interest to the top left corner by inserting the card front into an embossing folder and rubbing over a small area using a bone folder (just a word of caution here - it just came to me to try this, so I am not sure how this will affect the integrity of the embossing folder, it seems to be fine but you wouldn't want to do it repeatedly in the same spot). The embossing ended up being a little higher than I intended because I forgot that I needed to cut a little bit off the top of the card front - I was not starting over again so it stayed. I also noticed after I took my pictures that I forgot to colour the little end of the apple on the left, it's coloured now.

Supplies:

Stamps - Apple Of My Eye, Berry Sweet Frames, Picking Wildflowers (Flourishes)

Paper - Brown CS (Bazzil), Vanilla Cream CS (CTMH), Neena Solar White

Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, Chocolate (CTMH), Copics - Y00, 02, 11, 21, YG01, 03, 13, 67, 93, 95, 97, YR20, E13, 31, 42, 44, R000, 01, W00, W3, BV00

Other - Argyle EF (Darice), embossing stylus, bone folder, 3D foam

Papertrey September Blog Hop Challenge - Wreaths

This month's blog hop at Papertrey Ink is all about wreaths. There are so many ways to create beautiful wreaths that I had a hard time trying to decide what to make. Since my mom's birthday is in a couple of weeks I decided to go with a fall themed wreath. Here is what I came up with:

 

I created my wreath from burlap ribbon. I cut the edges off of a 15" length of ribbon and pulled out nine of the individual fibre strands which I then loosely and roughly braided. Once I formed the size of wreath that I wanted and sealed the ends together with glue I gently pulled at parts of the braid to open it up a bit and then sprayed the whole thing with hair spray so that the fibres would stay put.

For my leaves I took three scraps of watercolour paper, spritzed them with water and coloured them with re-inkers and a paint brush. In the picture below you can see that I used predominantly red on one, orange on the second and yellow on the third. After these dried I used a leaf die from The Sweet Life to cut out my leaves. I pressed each leaf into a Versa Mark pad and embossed them with clear embossing powder. I did this three times for each leaf to get a good thick coat of embossing. I ended up only using a few of these leaves but now I have more for future projects.

Supplies:

Stamps - Botanical Silhouettes (PTI)

Dies - The Sweet Life, Coverplate - Vertical Chevrons (PTI)

Paper - Black CS (Bazzil), watercolour paper
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, Versa Mark, clear embossing powder, various re-inkers (CTMH)
Accessories - Burlap Ribbon (CTMH), B&W ribbon (Offray)

Timeless Tuesday #237 - Make a Good Impression

The Timeless Tuesday challenge at Flourishes this week is to incorporate dry embossing on your card. I inked up my Bloomin Aussie Florals for the first time and used the chevron cover plate from Papertrey Ink for my embossing. I used this week's sketch at Clean&Simple.

Supplies:
Stamps - Bloomin Aussie Florals, Botanical Bookplate Vol 2 (Flourishes)
Paper - DP - Madeline (Prima), Heavenly Blue CS (CTMH), Neena Solar White
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, Copics - R81, 83, 85, 89, YG93, 95, 97
Accessories - black seed pearls
Other - Coverplate: Vertical Chevron, Heart Border Die (PTI)

Make It Monday #131 - Striped Embossing & Stripes in the Round

You have to check out Betsy Veldman's video at Papertrey Ink's Make It Monday challenge on how to create striped embossing. This was a fun technique, although a little frustrating as the post-it note leaves a little residue behind which the embossing powders just love to stick to. It was a challenge for me to accept the stray bits of embossing powder on my completed card.

As you can see I stripe embossed my sentiment, but I also used the same technique on my flowers, what fun!

To apply this technique to the flowers I created two acetate masks that I created by die cutting circles in them - one at 7/8" & one at 1 3/8" (see pic below). I tried giving them some stick by applying two way glue and allowing to dry, however this left a lot of residue behind so I abandoned that idea. I basically just laid the acetate mask over the Versa Mark stamped image, added the EP, grabbed both the cardstock and the mask and quickly flipped them over together to dump off the excess EP.

A couple of points - 
1. you cannot do your die cut first since you need a large enough piece of cardstock to hold onto for the embossing bit. I traced the outside of my die with a pencil onto my cardstock first, then stamped the image with versa mark, embossed and then used the traced outline as a guide to die cut the flower.
2.  Make sure your cardstock piece is larger than your acetate mask so that you can easily pick up the cardstock and the mask together to remove the excess EP - this part is a bit tricky, but if a little of the powder gets under the mask it doesn't matter, it actually adds a little bit of blending of the colours which is more natural for the flower image
3. you could probably cut your circles out of a post it note, but I used acetate so that I could better see where I was placing my mask

Supplies:
Stamps - Meadow Greens, Stylish Sentiments: Birthday (PTI)
Paper - Neena Solar White CS, Miss Nelly DP (Kaisercraft), Outdoor Denim CS (CTMH)
Ink - Pear (CTMH), Versa Mark, Outdoor Denim EP, Star Spangled Blue EP, Heavenly Blue EP
Accessories - Orange Resin Blossom (Kaisercraft), bitty pearls (coloured w Copic) (CTMH)
Other - Meadow Greens die (PTI), corner rounder, acetate, 3D foam

Flourishes September Release Challenge - Get In Shape

The September Release Challenge at Flourishes is to create a shaped card (not rectangle) or a 3D item. I decided to make a 3D item since I tend not to do that very often. I created a Christmas Ornament by rolling squares of paper into cone shapes. I quite enjoyed making this and I do love how it turned out - there are all kinds of variations that you can create with this. Had a hard time photographing this since it is overcast today, looks very pretty in person.

The instructions are pretty simple (you can watch a video by Anna K here). I used fourteen 2" x 2" squares of DP, formed them into a cone shape using Tombow glue runner. I punched out a 2" circle and divided it into four quadrants with a pencil. Apply a fast drying glue to one quadrant and start gluing your cones down to the circle, lining up the points of the cones with the center of the circle. I gathered an 18" piece of 1 3/4" wide lace into a circle, glued it down to a small cardstock circle and then layered my sentiment on top. I used a 2 way glue pen along the inside edge of each cone and sprinkled with prisma glitter (I did this step after gluing my cones to the base circle, but I think it would be easier to add the glitter before gluing the cones down).

Supplies:
Stamps - Pointsettia & Pine (Flourishes)
Paper - Frosted DP (CTMH), Classic Ivory CS (Flourishes)
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, Ponderosa Pine, Grey Wool (CTMH), Copics - YR000,00,02, BG72, 75, 78, 93
Accessories - Prisma glitter, sparkles (CTMH), lace
Other - Classic Circles Lg & Sm (Spellbinders), 3D foam, 2 way glue

Make It Monday #130 - Fabric Die Cuts

The Papertrey Ink Make It Monday challenge this week is to use Heat & Bond to help create fabric die cuts. I haven't used my dies to cut fabric before and was quite pleased with the result, although I didn't have any Heat & Bond I used a similar product - Steam-a-Seam 2, which works in the same way. The only thing I was disappointed in was the fact that I could not cut ribbon with my dies and was only able to cut through light cotton. Does anyone know if it is possible to die cut synthetic ribbons?

I didn't have any fabric gift bags, so I just ironed my fabric die cuts directly to my cardstock.  I kept this card simple, just swiping colonial white ink around the edges and heat embossing part of the sentiment.

Supplies:
Stamps - Stylish Sentiments Birthday (PTI)
Paper - Kraft CS (CTMH), fabric scraps
Ink - Colonial White, Ponderosa Pine, Versa Mark, White EP (CTMH)
Other - Birthday Trio Die (PTI), Steam-a-Seam 2 fusible web, 3D foam

Ran Out of 'Air' While CASEing Ally

Friday's Designer Focus at Flourishes was all about the very talented Allison Cope. Allison creates such beautiful work and she is always thinking outside of the box. I just absolutely love her artwork. Part of this summer feature is a challenge to CASE the highlighted designer. I chose to case this gorgeous card here in which Ally uses Copic airbrushing. I have a story to tell about this, but first here is my CASE card:

I will have to admit that I didn't airbrush this card, I sponged the ink on, and here is why. I started out totally CASEing Ally's beautiful card, using the same die cut, colours etc. I stamped and airbrushed the center panel and went on to create the backdrop panel when I ran out of 'Air' for my copics. I haven't done a lot of airbrushing having purchased one of the starter sets which comes with a can of air, (D60 - 7 - 8 minutes total spray time), to see if I would like it before investing in a compressor system. Living in a small town, the closest place to purchase Copic products is more than 45 minutes away so that wasn't happening. Having a half completed card I decided to improvise and tried using a can of air meant to be used for your computer. It actually does work but it takes some fiddling to get it to work well. At the left below is a picture of the back panel with my improvised 'computer canned air' - you can see that there are a lot of areas where the ink is quite heavy and the effect is quite uneven. The picture on the right shows the panel on which I used the copic canned airbrushing.

A little later I tried taping my Sketch marker to the can of computer air and was able to control the flow of ink a bit better, but I think the pressure is stronger than when using the Copic canned air and since I didn't have my masks pressed down completely you can see where the ink went under the mask.

I had a lot of fun with this challenge, but I still haven't decided on the airbrushing question yet. Thanks for looking.

Supplies:
Stamps - Poppy Patch, With Gratitude (Flourishes)
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, Copics - C1,3 &5, Sunflower (CTMH)
Paper - Neena Solar White, Black CS
Accessories - Black seam binding (May Arts), Black pearls (Kaiserkraft)
Other - Labels Eighteen, A2 Matting Basics A & B (Spellbinders), 3D foam, Bow Easy