Mother's Day Watercolour

I've seen a number of cards which use white ink for stamping the image, and I decided to try this on kraft card using Inktense pencils as my colouring medium. The ink I used was Hero Arts Unicorn which is the best white ink I've come across & is supposed to be fast drying - not on kraft, it isn't!! This turned out to be a happy accident because after leaving my first stamped image for a day to dry, I found that my watercolouring skills weren't good enough for the more detailed parts of the image, and I kept going over the lines. So I re-stamped & embossed it with clear fine detail powder to make the watercolouring easier.

The colour is Inktense Fuchsia & I returned to the image numerous times to tweak it until I was happy with the result. The greeting is by Clearly Besotted, stamped with Brilliance in Pearlescent Orchid, and the "raindrops" are Viva Decor Glass Effect Gel which I'd dropped onto a craft sheet & left to dry. Another happy accident is that although the overall card design just fell into place, it also happens to be the same as the sketch challenge running this week over at Splitcoaststampers so I'm going to enter it there.

Stamps: Hero Arts Delicate Blossoms CL449, Clearly Besotted Many Messages

Cardstock: Docrafts Kraft, Coredinations Fuchsia Fizz

Ink: Hero Arts Unicorn, Memento Brilliance in Pearlescent Orchid

Derwent Inktense pencil in Fuchsia

Viva Decor Glass Effect Gel "raindrops"

Meiflower Heart

Ribbon from stash

Seaside Scene: Embossing Paste - or Not

This might look like embossing paste but it isn't.  If you want to know what on earth I'm on about, all is revealed here, I'm just too lazy to explain it again! For this card I used a stencil by Imagination Crafts that I bought ages ago but had never used. Rather than mixing the filler with paint, this time I applied it uncoloured, intending to watercolour in between the raised images. Then I discovered (by accident) that the filler acts like a wick, absorbing any watercolour paint so I changed my plans & this is the result:

The theme this week over at Less is More is masking or stencilling, so although this probably isn't quite CAS enough I've decided to enter it there, as well as entering a second time at Virginia's View where there's a watercolour theme. I used various Aquamarkers.

The greeting is also by Imagination Crafts, stamped in Memento Nautical Blue (well, what else?)

Seaside Watercolour

When I painted the main image for this card the first signs of spring were creeping in & it seemed like summer was on its way. But as I write this, the sky is grey & a cold wind is whistling around the corner of the house so let's hope that's a temporary setback in the weather.

Just lately I've been enjoying doing watercolouring, something my late father would have been very pleased about as he was a very talented watercolour painter. I've got a long way to go before I get to his standard but I've really enjoyed losing myself in the creative process. This image is one by Michael Powell and I've coloured it with Aquamarkers & a fine paintbrush, I really don't get on with waterbrushes as I find they make it more difficult to control the amount of water used.

I added a stamped greeting from Clearly Besotted, some birds by Inkylicious & a few shells (again, Inkylicious), cut out to add a little bit of dimension. I hope I'm not too late to enter this into the challenge over at Virginia's View - take a look, there's some stunning work on there.

Stamps: Michael Powell "Shore Thing"

Inkylicious, Clearly Besotted "Many Messages"

Ink: Hero Arts Shadow Ink in Charcoal

Cardstock: Anna Marie Designs, watercolour card unknown

Embossing Paste Alternative

Lately I've been making a huge effort to start using what I've already got in my stash rather than buying new. So if I spot a craft item I'd like to try, I look for a home made alternative first rather than splashing the cash. Embossing paste seems to be popular at the moment and a quick Google search to try to find out what it was made of led me to an American discussion about "spackle" which turns out to be - Polyfilla! I decided to try using some of the One Strike Filler we had to hand, and which costs about £3 a tub. It's strange stuff, very light like marshmallows, so I mixed it with a little bit of pearlescent stencil paint to turn it a gorgeous purple colour. I cut an acetate stencil on my Eclips using an SVG file from here then spread the paste over it to make this:

It dried within 30 minutes to a rock hard finish. Now I've no idea whether this bears any resemblence to the proper arty stuff but I think it looks pretty darned good!

This last picture doesn't make it look too good but I'm not sure why - it looked a lot smoother than this would have you believe!

Cardstock: Anna Marie Designs

Imagination Crafts Stencil Paint

Stamps: Imagination Crafts

Ink: Brilliance Pearlescent Lavender

Jack Russell Digi

Cards for men are always a challenge; add into the mix the fact that the man isn't particularly into sports and it's almost a challenge too far! Anyway, in this case he owns 2 lively Jack Russell terriers so when I found this digistamp over at Just Inklined I knew I'd found my card theme. Then the sketch over at Sketch Saturday caught my eye so I decided to play along and here's the result:

Although I've been into watercolours just lately, this time I decided to dig out my Promarkers which haven't seen the light of day for a while. A stamped greeting & a hand-drawn paw print completed the sketch, and I highlighted the nose and eyes with some Inkssentials Glossy Accents, which I think you can see in the picture below.

Cardstock: Anna Marie Designs

Backing paper: from stash

Promarkers: Cinnamon, Cool Grey 3, Cool Grey 5, Umber, Caramel

Stamp: Clearly Besotted Many Messages

Ink: Memento Rich Cocoa