Colored Pencils on Black Card Stock

Hi there, fellow crafters! I hope you’re starting rested into your weekend, or that your weekend is at least beginning at a restful pace. Originally, I wanted to surprise you with a video, but new camera + cryptic settings kind of ruined the recording, so you'll have to make due with close up photos.

I was wondering how colored pencils like my Polychromos would hold up on black card stock – I know they are brilliant on kraft, but black? I almost expected the colors to be dull and never in my wildest dreams had I expected the brilliance I'd get. I used a white pencil as a “foundation” to lighten the base color a bit so it would show up even better against the black.

For this coloring, I didn't try to get a "blended" effect where colors would smoothly blend into each other. I wanted something more _organic_, as you can often see streaks of color on the petals of flowers. That's what I was going for and I think it worked out rather nicely.

I also used my Letterpress as a stamp positioning tool for the sentiment. When I use white pigment ink, I usually need to stamp multiple times to get even and solid color. I’m not great with lining up stamps, so I grabbed my Letterpress for that purpose. As you can see, it worked perfectly – you can see the fine print in the Altenew stamp and that is despite stamping it about four times. Perfect positioning!

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope you enjoyed the project!

Label Love

Persian Motifs

Sunshine Layers Die

InLinkz.com

More sketchy roses

Hello.

I have more sketchy roses from Altenew today.

I have used watercolours to colour the rose and stems and honestly if your afraid to water colour don't be its so easy to it this way.

Simply heat emboss the image the  add a wash of watercolour and the colour will stay in the embossed sections creating your shading. 

Really really simple.

If you don't have watercolours you can use distress markers or the equivalent add some colour where you want the darker parts to be and either spritz with water from a mister bottle of pull the colour out with a water brush,

To add an extra touch use a sparkly or metallic embossing powder.

The sentiment is also Altenew and is stamped in the hero arts ombre ink.

Click the images below to go straight to the store.

Thanks for looking.

Star Signs Trio

Hello!

I have been dying to play with my cute Mama Elephant Cosmic Stars set for ages - I don't really know which sign of the zodiac goes with which month but the images are just too sweet to resist!  So sweet that I made 3 cards to share with you :)

I have watercoloured each of the images and die cut them with the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle and Squares dies.  I created different backgrounds using Winnie and Walter's The Big, The Bold and The Happy stamps and Big Bang Confetti.  I found these images really easy to work with and they added to my stash of birthday cards.

Hopefully these stamps will be back in store later today or tomorrow once our crafty superhero, Tara, has had the chance to upload the latest delivery from Mama Elephant!

Thanks for stopping by :)

Sarah x

           

 

Rainbow Backgrounds

Kate is having computer problems today so I'm filling in with a quick CAS card using some brand new Hero Arts/Kelly Purkey background stamps.

I used a variety of Mama Elephant and Avery Elle pigment inks and stamped them rainbow fashion down the new Kelly's Background Squares and stamped it onto some Fig cardstock from our new special offer Bazzill cardstock.

Once trimmed to fit my card I just added some black striped washi tape for contrast and stamped a simple bold black sentiment using Altenew's Label Love.

There are lots of these new background stamps in store that would work for this kind of design - check out the New In Store section before they go.


Catch you Sunday

Tara

Colored Pencils on Kraft Card Stock with Wplus9 Botanical Bunch

Hello readers, it’s Julia!

Last weekend, I pulled a few new goodies out of my mailbox and I don’t know about you, but I just like to stare at the pristine stamps and dies and inks for a bit. “Polymer induced stupor”. I think this should be a medical term.

For today’s card, I decided to play with the new and gorgeous Wplus9 “Botanical Bunch” set. At first, I wasn’t even sure I wanted this set, but after seeing a few samples across the net, it went on to my “must have” list. I’m using Prismacolor pencils to color the image.

If I may say so without sounding pretentious: I love how the coloring turned out. I never thought that I could use Prismacolor pencils without a blending solution. If you use a blending solution, all the stroke detail will go away – and that’s totally ok if you prefer that look, but it simply never occurred to me that the stroke detail could be used as an artistic element. So, happy to have learned that and eager to try it on other images.

I hope you enjoyed the card and you’ll give the stamp set another look. There are currently quite a few sets available over at the Make The Day Special Stamp Store and I know for a fact they all long for a loving and caring home ;)

PS: If you want to see in detail how I colored this image, hop on over to my blog (you'll find the link in the sidebar) and check out the video!

Thanks for stopping by!

Dear Friend

So we're all done with the slushy cards for another year, but whilst thinking of all those people who don't have a special someone to share Feb 14th with each year, my mind turned to making a card to show a friend you love them to.  So here's my slightly punny take on a "dear" friend card.

I took the fabulous Label Love stamp set from Altenew and selected a few appropriate sentiments from it.  Next I required a rainbow's worth of inkpads - here I used a mixture of Avery Elle and Mama Elephant pigment inks and then just went about building my rainbow brick wall of sentiments!  The deer head is from the stag trio die set from Wplus9, which is oos today, but as the new release and restocks have FINALLY cleared customs it should be in stock late Monday or Tuesday at the latest.   The friend word is a die from Paper Smooches.  A little black makes the rainbow sing even louder.

That's all from me today as we're off to our very first trade show at the NEC in Birmingham to see what exciting new products we can find for you ;-)  Keep an eye on our instagram feed to see what goodies we find and leave us a comment below if there is something you really want us to look out for.

Tara


NEWS FROM THE STORE:

• Wplus9 new release (yes those lovely elephants!) and restocks, as I said above, will be here Monday or Tuesday.
• The Lawn Fawn new release will hopefully be here next weekend - just after release in the States.
• The Avery Elle new release is already here so will be available as soon as the release goes live Stateside on the 26th February.
• We have restocks from Mama Elephant in customs clearance that will hopefully be here mid-week this week and the new release has just landed in the UK so should be here early next week.
• Paper Smooches new release is in transit and again will be here next week.
• We've just ordered restocks and the new release from Altenew - Vintage Roses is not coming back yet (sorry) as they are out of stock of it too.