COLORED PENCIL ON KRAFT

One of the more fun and different things you can do with stamping is to stamp an image on kraft cardstock, then color it in with colored pencils.

 

Of course, you need a stamp with outline edges, one you can actually color in. Since alcohol markers have come into vogue, including the Stampin' Up! Stampin' Blends, there are so many images that work well for this fun technique.

The colors in the image are, of course, somewhat muted compared to what you can achieve when you stamp and color on white. But I think the look is so unique and all around fun. 

A cloeup and personal look at the colored image:

Since my colored image was of a fair size and I wanted it to be the "star" of the card anyway, I kept the rest of the card fairly simple. To add a bit of a feminine touch, I cut off a piece of doily and placed that like a crown on the oval shapes.

I mounted it on an old piece from the Stampin' Up! Memories and More series since it already incorporated two of my basic colors, kraft (Crumb Cake) and white.

Have you ever tried this simple, but effective, technique? If not, grab an outline stamp that you love and some colored pencils and put your creativity to work!

Krafy-y

Smiles.

SUNNY BIRTHDAY

As I perused the Annual Catalog for the first time when it was released a couple months ago, I thought I'd looked at it pretty carefully. But, until I saw a darling video featuring our CEO Sara Douglass with the Sharing Sunshine stamp set, I discovered that I was missing out on a whole lot of cuteness. 

The Sharing Sunshine (page 39), besides being only a mere $16.00, is chockful of the components to create lots of cheer. It also has a handful of great sentiments. As soon as I finished watching Sara's video, I ordered the set.

Below is my first card using the Sharing Sunshine set.

On the Clearance Rack awhile back, I stumbled upon a set of adorable card bases and matching envelopes that I ordered without really knowing what I was going to do with them because they were truly a good deal.

Sharing Sunshine turned out to be the perfect pairing with this cute card and envelope set. I just had to make a cheery tag with the components and pop it onto the card base, add one of the sentiments from the set, and I was done!

Since the white card base incorporated a host of flowers in Mango Melody, that's the color I went with for my sun and the cardstock surrounding him. I added a little tag reinforcer to the top of the tag in black since I stamped my sentiment and the sun's smily face in black.

I hope you picked up one of these card/envelope sets on the Clearance Rack. If you didn't and want to recreate a card similar to this, it would be easy to do with white cardstock and a small flower stamp in Mango Melody. 

This card is a bit larger than normal, measuring at 4 1/4" x 6 1/4", but it would be simple to scale it down a little from top to bottom to fit it on a 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" A2 card.

Here's a tutorial for you:

SUPPLIES:

Kit card bases and envelopes

Black cardstock

Mango Melody cardstock

White cardstock

Mango Melody ink

Black ink

Sharing Sunshine stamp set (page 39, Annual Catalog)

Die cutting machine

Stitched Shapes (retired, but you can use current product for the two circle shapes)

Tailor Made Tags Dies (page 166, Annual Catalog)

Thick White Baker's Twine

Yellow and White Baker's Twine (dig into your stash -- I'm sure you have some!)

DIRECTIONS:

This card is created on a card base that I found on the Stampin' Up! Clearance Rack. So, all we are doing is the cute tag on the front of the card.

Using Mango Melody cardstock and the large tag from the Tailor Made Tags dies, cut a tag. From a scrap of black cardstock and using the same die set, die cut one of the little holed pieces and adhere it over the hole in the tag.

On white cardstock, using the various components to build a sun from the Sharing Sunshine set, create a sun. Add the smile in black ink.

Cut the sun out with a circle die of the right circumference. I actually used the Stitched Shapes dies, which are, unfortunately, now retired.

From Mango Melody cardstock, die cut another circle about a quarter inch larger in diameter than the sun face one.

Join these two circles together, then mount them to the tag.

Loop some thick white baker's twine through the hole in the tag and finish it off with a bow of yellow and white baker's twine.

Add the tag to the card front with Stampin' Dimensionals.

Stamp the "Happy Birthday" from the Sharing Sunshine set at the bottom of the card.

Sunny

Smiles.

WELCOME BABY

 My niece recently gave birth to a cute baby girl, her first child. To commemorate that special occasion, I decided to make her new family a special card. I purposely didn't put any sentiment or writing on the front of the card in case she wanted to use it as a decoration in Baby's room.

In planning for this card, I wanted it to be pinkish, so I chose Petal Pink for the entire thing. I love the look of tone on tone.

Because dotted Swiss always seems so very feminine to me, I embossed the gates of the card with that look.

The belly band took me the longest to create. I knew I wanted to use one of the lovely lacy butterflies from the Brilliant Wings die set. But beyond that I wasn't sure. 

Digging through my really old embossing folders, I came across this precious strip of embossing that resembles eyelet somewhat. 

I ran two strips of the Petal Pink cardstock through inside it so I could have double the width, with one strip facing the other, so it looks as if it is a single piece of lace. I needed to be so careful to get the strips to match perfectly. For some reason, that was a real challenge to me.

The two strips were added to the front of the belly band (the reverse side is plain cardstock). 

One detailed butterfly was die cut, as was one solid butterfly. Actually, the solid butterfly is a smidge larger than the fancy one. 

To add to the feminine delicacy, I fluffed it up just a bit more. 

I found -- from an old Paper Pumpkin kit -- two pearly hearts in the exact same color as everything else and adhered them to the body of the butterfly.

 

The second feminine thing was a little bit of bling in a sparkly ribbon folded and adhered to the back side of the butterfly before it was all added to the lacy belly band.

A closeup of all the details

Just to demonstrate the wonderful texture and dimension of the card

Welcome Baby!

Baby

Smiles.

CHRISTMAS SEASON

I created this card in July with the intent of posting it as Christmas in July. Alas, here it is August, and I guess I'm late. So, Happy Christmas in August!

Have you seen the newest Stampin' Up! Mini Catalog? As I leafed through it the first time, I was astounded at how many wonderful seasonal products were in there! Since I have every single Christmas set I've ever owned, I know I should NOT be adding to that already overflowing arsenal of Christmas supplies. But . . .

When I laid eyes on the Christmas Season bundle on page 18, I was smitten. I tell you, SMITTEN. That's a winter mitten with an "S". I preordered that bundle and . . . Well, it is absolutely wonderful! 

The two step stamps for all sorts of winter scenes are fabulous. 

But, the dies? My favorites are the variety of labels of all sizes that are included.. I have used several of them numerous times already. And they will be used throughout the year, not just seasonally.

For my card, I used several of the stamps and the largest label die.

Because of the sizes of various things I used for this card, it is a bit smaller than the traditional A2 card, measuring 4" x 5". The cardstocks I used besides white were Real Red and Shaded Spruce. 

Loving pinecones almost as much as I love snowflakes and snowmen, I was really excited about these realistic looking pinecones. 

I used Real Red, Shaded Spruce and Soft Suede to stamp my images. To get this look for the pinecones, I stamped off the Soft Suede once for one of the steps. 

Because I didn't want the white backdrop for the seasonal items to be too blah and flat, I embossed it with the Paint Embossing Folder. I love the refined texture this embossing gives to a piece!

Looking back on my photos of this card, it appears that the embossing doesn't even show up. I'm sorry about that. Believe me, it really does look elegant.

I popped up a few of the pieces -- the two pinecones and the holly berries -- with Stampin' Dimensionals to give it a bit more realistic look. You can see the dimension in the photo below.

Adding a subtle little bow of red and white baker's twine finished off the card just right.

I do feel a better name for this set would have been Winter Season. Not everyone celebrates Christmas.

Have you made any seasonal cards yet? Or are you one of those ambitious crafters who start the next years cards as soon as the holidays are over? 

Seasonal

Smiles.

 

#dailycreating MARCH 2021

A month has passed, so it's now time for another installment of the great #dailycreating journey I am taking. This month I am featuring drawings from March 2021. With the exception of the first drawing, all of the rest of them were done with a brand new medium, at least brand new to me. 

Up until then I'd been almost exclusively using Copic Markers. I had discovered and finally admitted that using these markers so often was costing me way too much money. On the #dailycreating group, someone had mentioned the pleasing results they got from Derwent Inktense Pencils. 

I did a little research on these English pencils and decided to take the plunge and ordered the 24-count set and started on my new experience. An experience that I quickly learned had a steep learning curve for me. All these months later, I still strongly feel I am still in the learning stages.

I must admit though that I liked them enough after a little while that I have now ordered every color of the Inktense Pencils available. Unfortunately, four of them are still on backorder as of this date. So I am chomping at the bit to get ALL the pencils in a usable order. 

The purpose of this Facebook group, run by artist Terry Runyan, is to encourage the members to do something creative every single day. For the most part, I do fulfill that expectation. Occasionally, depending on life, I do miss a day of drawing. After that first miss, I happily discovered that life does go on and I shouldn't chastise myself for not fulfilling my commitment that day.

It is sort of an important time for me currently. First of all, this month I have been on this journey with #dailycreating for THREE YEARS! And I also completed my 1000th drawing. A good milestone.

Above each of the drawings, I will note the prompt for the day, as well as any other pertinent information I might have on the subject matter. The prompts Terry supplies for the coming week each Sunday afternoon are entirely optional. Some days, it is wonderful to have these prompts for a jumping off point if I'm not feeling particularly inspired that day.

#under the sea

white swan

#gone fishing

#turtle

#thing on thing

guinea hen

#playful

#dogurday

chihuahua

#gardening

#thing on thing

rufous hornbill

#fruit

#caturday

#luggage

#automobile

#thing on thing

green jungle fowl, indonesia

#thing on (in) thing

After typing in the various prompts, I feel I must explain a few things. Every Wednesday, Terry has designated as Thing on Thing day. With the exception of the last one, the bunny, I chose to draw a bird that has something interesting or extraneous (in my opinion) on its head.

Saturdays, she has been designating as Caturday or Dogurday. Thus the explanation for those days. In recent weeks though, much to my delight, she has added to her Saturday repertoire, by adding as a possibility animal-urday. This means that we can draw any animal we want and add -urday to the prompt. I love this! So, watch for some of my animal-urdays in upcoming months.

Looking at my "favorites" for this month, I see I've done a few more whimsical drawings, a sure departure for me. While these are somewhat out of the box as far as my confort zone goes, I must admit that I found them not only challenging, but also sort of fun.

Please note that these are my original drawings (as lacking as the photos themselves may be) and are not to be used in any way without my express consent. As always, if you like anything enough to want to own it, I will gladly make a high quality Giclee print for you. Just contact me.

Drawn

Smiles.