Dirty Dozen May Christmas card

 It's that time again, at the beginning of the month the Dirty Dozen Christmas card challenge releases a new prompt with the idea of getting some cards done throughout the year ahead of time. This month, I had in the back of my mind as I was looking at the prompt that I tend to give more and more gift cards at Christmas time so, the idea started in the back of my mind to make some cards that were big enough to hold say those gift cards on postcard type style ones. You know what I mean right? I cannot tell you what the challenge is but, I can tell you what I did here.

I dug out this Impression Obsession Chic Marabou bag from Aleasa Bakers line and stamped it with tulip red versafine clair on some Neenah solar white cardstock and then painted the red parts and shadow parts of the bag with Daniel Smith watercolors. I decided to add some Dr.PH Martins bleed proof white ink over the feathery parts of the bag and then added a clear polished dot gem from Stampin up on the clasp button part of the design. The sentiment here is from Unity Stamps spoiler alert 2019 sentiment kit set and this panel was cut with a Spellbinders curvy rectangles die. That lace is vintage and the Printed red snowflake paper is from a Tim Holtz pad called Christmas Noel. The base here is some textured bazzill and it finished out at A6 in real life. If you'd like to play along with us the details can be found here inside the Christmas Cards part of the special forums for fan club members set aside here inside Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

A catch up post of Featured Stamper CASE cards

 There have been so many featured stamper challenges I have played along with the last few months and I have not actually taken the time to blog about any of them. So, I decided to just let this be one big post. 

This is one I did for my son when he moved recently. and it was jump started by this scrapbooking layout here seen in Lynn's gallery. That scene I kept black and white as her photos are sepia and then I did add some color to the flag here. The sentiments are from the Simon Says Stamp home sweet home set.

This one was jump started by this cute card in Nancy's gallery and the fact that the spring chicken sentiments were new to me via eBay at the time. The spring chicken is from Art Impressions, as is the goofy things sentiment. the two spring chicken sentiments are from the cottage stamper.

These tags were jump started by these cute tags in Diane's gallery seen here. Each of the birdhouse stamps are old retired ones from Imaginations. 

When it was Colleen's turn as featured stamper I seen this birdhouse card of hers and loved those colors. But I had also you know put my birdhouse and a few bird stamps on wood blocks out on the shelf behind the table I stamp at after I packed the snowmen away. So, This is the first time this stamp had been inked too. 

Kristine has this sweet card here and I have not made a card with all the pretty layers like this for a while and that was fun to do. The girl and her dog on the swing are from lili of the Valley and that sentiment is from Taylored Expressions woof strips set. 

When Gayle was featured stamper I came across this cool vintage photography themed card and I have very similar stamps that she used but, I wanted to just play with the theme of it and so, I changed mine to be a little more CAS so I could highlight that silly Riley & Co. sentiment here inside the big Darkroom Door frame. The gal is from an old Stampin up set called stamping fun for everyone and I did cut off the bows off her shoulders as I am not so much of a frou frou type of a gal.

Watercoloring Drills Odd Brush Butterflies

 This week marks the 100th Water Color Wednesday daily challenge at Splitcoaststampers. And it happened to be my week to host. and something funny along the way, I have never done anything really "in order" and recently after all this time just for the first time started making swatches of mixed colors of paint and doing that, I came across this practice drill to get those non round brushes wet and see what they will do pattern/stroke wise following along with this tutorial seen on YouTube here.

 So, I pulled the non round brushes out of the ceramic handle-less mug I have them in and funnily enough quite a few of these still had the sizing on them and had not been wet when this was shot.

 So I grabbed my Strathmore practice strokes pad, and this happened to be the last page in it available.

and I jotted down notes under the "wings" so I could remember what I did since I have more than a handful of brushes.

Second layer or paint doodles were added with ha, you guessed it a round brush.

And I decided my favorite was the one that says it was made with the 1/4" stripper. So I tried to recreate it below. yeah, we can see how well that went.. And Then I grabbed an odd sheet and tried it again with colors I like instead of just random colors. 

And I liked my abstract moth butterflies much better seeing them in similar shades of blues and greens.

So I chopped that sheet up and started messing around with sentiments on similar shades of cardstocks.

And ended up with a couple of cards. 

This one that sentiment is from Stampendous. This one is 6" square in real life. the blue mat was part of a premade cardbase that was for an A7 size from paper source but, it was not wide enough for 3 panels to go across it so, I used two of them here and then used the third on a second card seen below.

This one is 5 1/2" square in real life and the blue panel was cut from the back side of that first card that I chopped up and the green here is SU soft seafoam. the long sentiment "how to fly" is from Penny Black and the bottom one "spread your wings" is from Impression Obsession.

The whites on both cards are Neenah solar white. the painted panels are Strathmore 400 series cold press. That's about if from me, I hope you are enjoying playing along with these challenges as we learn together. You can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers. thanks for stopping by.

Watercoloring Color blocks with doodles

 This week we are playing along with using watercolor to make color blocks to doodle on. The video can be seen here on YouTube. 

I just love everything about that from the color choices to the doodled foliage. And then I decided that I should you know practice this on some cheaper watercolor paper just in case. And I liked how the colors turned out on this practice sheet so I just rolled with it. 

 

This is my first panel and I used some for tape to make the blocks and it was pretty wide, so when the tape and salt came off it looked like this.

I had flipped it on its side and I knew I had this poppy stamp from The Stampin' Up oh so lovely set because Linda gifted it to me a looong time ago. I am still not really a doodly person, and yet I do have a "few" stamps that lean this way. So, I kept looking at this at this point thinking there is just too much white space here. So I cut the panel apart with a rectangle die. And then I found this pre made card base in the use it up pile and thought ok cut, the sides off the panels with the paper trimmer so there can be "pink" space between them on the front.

And staggered them across a DCWV 5 1/2" square card base. This allowed me to not have them be perfectly straight and I decided to tie on some May Arts gingham while I was messing with it. and then I went back and looked at the video again and laughed at my "non" quick card... So, the other half of this sheet of Strathmore was laying there and this time I picked  a skinnier Washi tape to make the blocks.

And I kept going with the same use them up colors in the palette. I really like how the color blocks turned out on these panels. 

And so, I decided if I really wanted it to be a "quick" card I would grab some stamps so, I picked up this birdhouse trio stamp from Judith and the sentiment from the Concord & 9th city stacks set and yeah the birdhouses are a wood mounted rubber stamp and I got it overlapped a little too close together. I might try a white gel pen over the In My part of the sentiment but, I have not gotten that far. I might just pitch this and try it again sometime. At any rate I really did enjoy this one and I know I will be trying it again sometime soon. That's about it from me, you can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us and Thanks for stopping by.

Inspired by { The Postman's Knock}

 Happy Good Friday, It's my turn to host the Inspiration this week and I have chosen the Postman's Knock. The blog is seen here, And the pinterest boards are here . I was totally sucked into how gorgeous this pin here is with the metallic watercolor on the black background. Seeing that, I decided to save time and use a wreath shaped floral. And I have spent hours this last week re-arranging my space trying to put stamps with stamps and dies with dies etc. So, that had me moving stamps that I used to "know" where they were to new spots. And somehow I had this particular wreath stuck in my brain what I can tell you now is, its not with the flowers or the wreaths. days later I found it with the Hearts. Yeah. So, one of these days the next step will be to scan or photograph the containers/drawers each stamp is in so I can plug that into the inventory. One of the things that caught my eye with that shot is I knew I had similar paints. ( if not the same set?) The one below is Coliro - M1200 mica pigment rich pearl, set of 12 (this one on Amazon)

A look at the image taped down and paint drying. This is some Stonehenge black watercolor paper ( found here on Amazon) And I had stamped the Stampin' Up! Floral Wreath with some Versamark ink and heat embossed with some SU Blushing Bride powder. ( I did use a anti static tool on this before but, I still got some pink dust on the paper) The edge of this paper also did not respond well to being taped to a board so, the edges got pilled and rough so I did end up die cutting this panel down to a A2 sized with a trinity Stamps blanked stitched rectangle die. 

The sentiment panel here is from a really old Hero Arts set called year around sentiments OWH (operation write home) and was die cut with a Nellie Snellen tags 3 die. the printed paper is a scrap ( unknown) and I "think" the ribbon is offray. There is a little bit of gold glimmer on the edges of it. This was just tied in a knot. The Cardbase is some Stampin' Up powder pink and this one finished out at A7 in real life. You can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us, Thanks for stopping by and Have a Blessed Easter.

Watercoloring values aka Cotton Ball Tree

 This week the Watercoloring challenge is taking a look at this tutorial about watercolor values with a limited palette and a simple tree with puffs of color to resemble cotton balls. You can see the video here on YouTube.

This is a shot of first layer of paint drying on the table. The shell pink I used is this one from Holbein and it feels a little thick and Gouache like to me, not quite as transparent as Daniel Smith paints.

Second layer of paint with a swatch of the paints used and the brushes. I did prefer the artist version with the gel pen dots added to the scene but, the only gel pen I have good results with is a white one or a clear stardust one and I felt like, this was something that would look better with a darker shade of ink so, I skipped that step.

I wasn't really sure if I would actually do anything with this painting so, it surprised me that I did make it into a little card. the square dies from the Spellbinders 6" square sets ( A & B ) were used here to cut the Papertrey Ink smoky grey paper frame to go over the painting for a CAS look. This one finished out at 5 1/2" square in real life. That's about it from me, thanks for stopping by. If you'd like to play along with us, this challenge can be found here at Splitcoaststampers.

Inspired By { James Street Home Decor }

 This week Kia has shared with us the James Street home decor store and I came across this Chicken baby blanket and my eyes totally focused on the pink chicks and my brain started thinking Easter. And then I started actually digging through my chicken stamps. And what I found is almost 99.9 % of my chickens are fully grown hens and roosters and tend to be larger sized stamps. I really do not have much in the way of bitty peep cute chicks. So, I started out stamping some of these Stampin' Up & Whipper Snapper Designs chickens with Memento Sand ink on some Arches cold press watercolor paper. The other ground spots were stamped with Mello Moss.

And the blanket was so busy to my eye that I knew I wanted it to be simpler as a card, and so, I left off the ladybugs, red fern shaped leaves and the whole filling all the white space aspect. I did leave a lot of the creamy background that the blanket has though and I did add lib those fern type foliage with the paintbrush as none of my stamps were the right scale for these chicks. This panel was cut with a Lacy Layers A7 die from Waffle flower and the Art Impressions sentiment was cut with a Trinity stamps stitched mini slimline die and that is up on foam pop dots over the chicken panel. The printed paper here is a really old one from Basic Grey that picked up some of those pinks and greens and the base is a Powder Pink one from Stampin' Up. I am thinking about adding Happy Easter or Happy Spring to the inside but, I have not gotten that far with it yet. That's about it from me.  You can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us. Thanks for stopping by.

Watercoloring Eggs

 This week Kia has shared with us the link to Debby Hughes water coloring bird eggs video. Seen here on YouTube. You know that I am a huge fan girl of Debby's so, this was a little intimidating to me to try as I dug through my egg stamps and most of them are teeny tiny so, I ended up spending some time free handing them and trying to mix colors. and I knew this would be one of those trial and error error things. The first two sheets I did as trial runs, are in the third photo down here. They tell you that comparison is the thief of Joy but, seriously when you are comparing your self and how much you have improved it really just gives me a thrill.

these are Daniel Smith paints on Arches cotton cold press.

And I realized that I had room for a third so, I added another one. these are imaginary bird egg colors not from any particular breed. You can click on any photo here to enlarge it and use your browsers back button to continue reading.

This gives you the idea, the top two sheets are the practice trial runs on some Strathmore 400 series cold press. Which just does not work as well as the Arches Cotton cold press ( bottom trio) which you can see. These are nearly the same shade of the same paints with the same brush. 

I did cut a frame with a die from Whimsy stamps called Slimline scenic country side twice from the same almost Kraft cardstock from Neenah. I do own the same reverse print sentiments that Debby used on her card, and I think that is just so perfect but, I was not trying to duplicate her card so, I did leave this as a blank one. That's about it from me. You can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us.  Thanks for stopping by.

Inspired by {DIY Craftland's Blog}

 This week we are taking a look at DIY craftland and I came across this pretty Wedding scene shot. ( the top main photo in this post) the one right under the title and I thought Oh, I have some Stamps happen floral frame type stamps and maybe 30 minutes before I had seen that I had been messing around with watercolor paints and did some wedding kids (because, it was already stamped and I was trying for skin tones) And I thought oh this will work.

And then I came home and dug out those scene stamps and the flowers were wrong or they were Portrait orientation one thing or another I dismissed all the stamps I owned. and I had this scrap of Arches hot press paper on the table so, I said to my self you could probably paint something that would work. ( and its a cartoon image so, it does not have to be the most accurate thing) So, this was first round of paint. 

I had cut the kids out with scissors as they were stamped on some Smooth Neenah solar white, which if you do not use much water will work for paints but, Then I had added blue to the sky and green to the ground and pilled the paper. So, after it was cut out I did put foam pop dots under the image and added a few touches of some metallic watercolors to the detailing. 

I did add a few more larger drops of pink paint to the trellis the next day and a few more sprigs of random grass and streaks of green to the ground. A little bit of White gouache ( that faded to nothing in the scene) and decided to just let it go before it became another mess. The base here is Stampin Up Soft seafoam and this one is A7 in real life. You can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us. Thanks for stopping by.