Stamping with Markers-to-Stamp Technique + Watercolor Effect

Hello fellow crafters! I hope you are well and have some time to be creative. Today's card is using one of my favorite Mama Elephant stamp sets.

I don't even recall when I saw this technique first: someone took their markers (Distress, Memento, Stampin Up) directly to the stamp and was able to use different colors on a complex image. I never had luck with it – the impressions I got were never crisp and of the quality I liked, so I forgot about the technique again. Recently, I wondered: so what if it's not perfect. If I use Distress Markers, I can reactivate them with water. So, I gave it another go and look where it got me:

Of course, you could also mask parts of your stamp and then ink it up individually and achieve a similar result, but a) I am too lazy and b) I really wanted to see if I could create a watercolor look despite stamping. And I'm happy to report: yes, I could make it work.

The original stamped image looked blotchy and not very crips – no surprises there, as the Distress Markers/Inks are not made for stamping. But with some water, they turned out beautifully – I guess if you give this card to someone who's not familiar with crafting, you might sell them on the idea you drew the elements ;)

I added some blue stickles and splashes of gold spray to sparkle up the card, then stamped the sentiment and mounted it. All done. Not a lot to this card, but it looks rather pretty, doesn't it?

Thanks for stopping by! And if you want to see a video of how I created these effects, hop on over to my blog. You'll find the link in the sidebar.

If any of the products I used for this project are not available in the store, I'm offering alternatives in the product listing below.

Create an Elegant CAS Card with Altenew

Hi folks! Today I grabbed one of my favorite floral stamp sets, which is Hennah Elements from Altenew. Love, love, love. These images are gorgeous for coloring. My original plan was to stamp out the image, color it with copics, and then stamp on top of it with embossing ink and heat emboss the outline. After two attempts I gave in – I was just too impatient to line up the flowers correctly on the second stamping round. So instead, I went with clean and simple.

I die cut a blue panel from the Femme Frames, then a white panel with the smaller one of the two dies. The big flower was stamped and embossed first, then I added the smaller flower and the leaf. The dimensional effect is done via masking … if you don't know what masking is or how it works, I've got a video showing it in detail here.

I used a shiny embossing powder to give the floral elements some shine and special-ness. Looks so lovely in real life! That's already it for today! Thanks for stopping by and see ya soon!

Supply List

• Hennah Elements by Altenew
• Femme Frames by Mama Elephant
• Water Blooms by Mama Elephant

Water Blooms

Hi there.... something a little different from me today, I've gone rather floral :0)

As I'm sure you read in Tara's blog post yesterday, the DT this week are using a beautiful colour palette from design seeds to inspire our creative juices and it must be because the garden is bursting into life, because my immediate thoughts were floral!!

                                                         

I've used the Water Blooms stamp set from Mama Elephant, stamping the single flowers and leaves through an oval mask with pigment inks. To make darker centres on the round flowers I applied darker ink to the stamp using a dauber and over-stamped the original paler image. The leaves were a bit dinky for this treatment so I used pencils to add extra detail. The sentiment is from Oh Happy Day by Avery Elle which I stamped twice in black ink to make sure it stood out on the floral pattern :0)

Remember to pop back each day and see how the colours inspired each of us and you can play along too, Tara has placed a linky tool on her blog post here so you can share your colour inspired projects with everyone as well :0)

                                       

Thanks for stopping by and see you next week :0)
Jenny x

Focal Colour

Good morning - sorry I'm late but I had a sleep in after a couple of very late nights getting all your orders packed.   So far in the ME vs LF debate - it's pretty much a dead heat - you all just seem to like everything ;-)     I know we've had a few sell outs already - they will be added to the next order from each brand so keep an eye out on Facebook for restocking announcements.

OK, so onto today's little bit of inspiration and I decided to use an older set from Mama Elephant that has been restocked - Water Blooms - a really pretty and useful floral set.   I wanted to show you have you can achieve a focal point and background image with just one stamp by changing the ink and paper colours and the current colour theme at Less is More was the perfect way to play.

I took the large bloom from the stamp set and stamped it with a pale green ink onto green cardstock in a repeat pattern to form a simple background.  Then to create my focal point image I used the same stamp but stamped in pale yellow ink onto yellow card stock.  To add some interest and definition, I used a darker yellow copic to add a little shading to this image and added glitter to the dots.    I used the same darker shade of yellow to create a mat to make it stand out from the background.  Some yellow gems finished the flower centres.

I wanted the card for a friend who is just out of hospital, so I opted for a sentiment from Papersmooches from Healthy Vibes which I  don't think we currently have in stock but I will bring it back if it's still available as its very useful for get well cards.