Creative Vision Stamps!

If you'd like to do a little shopping over at Creative Vision Stamps, I have a coupon code for you! You can use coupon code DINA25 to get 25% off your stamp order (stamps only) until 2/28/16. Enjoy, and tell them I sent you!

Mix-Ability Challenge: Wildlife Adventure

This week's Mix-Ability challenge over on Splitcoast is to create a project featuring wildlife and incorporate a little texture. Here's my card......

This image is from I Love Rubber Stamps - their line is now carried by Creative Vision Stamps, which makes me very happy! I have always loved their realistic nature and animal images and would hate to see them go! Always enjoyed the challenge of rummaging through their bins of unmounted rubber at stamp shows. ;) Beautiful artwork.

My image is watercolored using Brusho and QoR paints on a 4" white Art Square from Inchie Arts - this is a fun surface to work on... it does have a little learning curve because the matboard is more absorbent than traditional watercolor paper, but that property allows the pigments to blend in the paper rather than on the surface. It's a fun process. I added some details with Prismacolor pencil and a liner pen.

To add texture, I spread some matte gel medium in the corners, then pressed into the gel with a rubbing plate. These are intended for crayon rubbings or for adding texture to clay... I bought them to use with my Gelli Plate, but I love this technique for adding texture to a painting too... these are Shade-Tex Rubbing Plates - they come in themed packs of 6. This one is from the architecture set.

Here's the resulting texture - after it dried, I rubbed a little Inka Gold over the raised areas.

Still organizing stamps and cataloging as we go... yesterday my daughter asked me, "Have you even ever used all these stamps?!" *sigh*

If you'd like to do a little shopping over at Creative Vision Stamps, I have a coupon code for you! You can use coupon code DINA25 to get 25% off your stamp order (stamps only) until 2/28/16. Enjoy, and tell them I sent you!

 Have a wonderful weekend!

Splitcoast tutorial: Kraft Bag Gift Card

Bev's tutorial over on Splitcoast is a cute Kraft Bag Gift Card - it's a fun way to dress up a gift card using a simple flat paper sack.

I didn't have a kraft bag at home, so I made one myself out of some lightweight paper - this is about the weight of newsprint (it's DCWV Vintage Essentials and I picked it up at Tuesday Morning), and it worked just fine for me.

I cut it to 10-3/4" x 7-1/2", and folded at 2-3/4" and 7-1/2", adhered the overlap, and folded the bottom up. I just used a tiny scallop border die to decorate the top. The fold creates 2 pockets after you add the belly band.

The dies I used are mine from Impression Obsession: Coffee Set & All-in-One Frames - Rectangles 2; Stamps: Perk Up and My Heart is Warm.

Hope you're having a great week!

Mix-Ability challenge - Faces

 This week's Mix-Ability challenge was to include a face on our projects - here's my piece - this is a 5" x 6" piece of matboard that I had left over from the pieces I use to back my art prints.

I have a collection of canvas panels, matboard, tags and wood pieces at the side of my desk - they receive my extra paint when I am working on other projects, and that is how I build up backgrounds with random colors in preparation for new projects. It's a lot of fun, and they're just ready there for me to grab when I actually have time and brain space to do original artwork. 

This is a piece of matboard that had some teal, silver and grey watercolor and acrylic splotches on it - I sketched onto the board with pencil and then pen, colored in with some colored pencil, and then fingerpainted with some white acrylic to add highlights and cover a few dark areas. The background was stamped with some hand carved stamps, vintage stamps, and collage stamps I keep handy. 

The sentiment is from my line of stamps at Impression Obsession, and that butterfly is from Jim Stephan.

 I think I'll add this piece to my Etsy store - I'd love to sell more original artwork there!

Impression Obsession DT Challenge: Happy Birthday To You!

The Impression Obsession team's challenge today is to create a birthday project. I saw this cupcake image (Hoppy Wishes) the other day while we were indexing, and thought it would be a fun one to use, since Easter's on its way...

I had my Brusho palette out for yesterday's project, so I watercolored the 2 images at the same time while I was watching I Love Lucy. The background here was from my filed stash - I think this was a piece of cardstock I used to catch acrylic paint that went off the edge of other projects. It had a lot of similar colors on it, and it worked just perfectly!

Stamps I used: Hoppy Wishes, Life Stuff clear set

Be sure to check out these other designers' blogs for inspiration -

Anna @ Sassy & Sweet Notes
Daniela @ For the First Time
Dina @ Mama Dini's Stamperia ---- you're here
Ellen @ The Serendipitous Stamper
Jeanne @ Inky Paws
Jenny @ One Krafty Kat
Karen @ Paper Lilies and Ink
Kittie @ Kittie Kraft
Laura @ Laura's Stamp Art Journal
Vicki @ Summerthyme Studio

Remember you can enter these challenges too, using your Impression Obsession stamps! See the I.O. blog for all the details - you might even win a $25 gift certificate!! We'd love to have you join us.

Splitcoast Tutorial: No Line Watercoloring

This week's No Line Watercoloring tutorial over on Splitcoast is brought to us by Jenn Shurkus - it's a fun way to create an artsy look with stamps, starting with a lightly inked outline.

Here's my sample - I started by stamping my Chinese Lantern image using Ranger Pale Ochre Archival Ink - it's sort of a buttery yellow.

Chinese Lantern

I painted the image with water-activated Brusho from my newest palette - each well has a few drops of water and enough Brusho powder to make a concentrated ink. (This is the palette I like to use - I have 3 of them for different paint brands... I love all the wells and the big open spaces for mixing (there's a tray that lifts out and there's space underneath there, too.) The paint can be reactivated, and retains some of its fun mix of colors as it dries... it's really fun to work with in that format. I started with a layer of yellow, then heat set the yellow and laid in a darker orange, then red, and a burgundy for shading. I used Indigo for the deepest shadows.

I have a tutorial for purchase HERE that goes a little more in depth into my usual process for borderless watercoloring, if you're interested. It's so much fun, and great mixed media practice too!

Mix-Ability challenge: Birth Flower

This week's Mix-Ability challenge is an inspiration challenge - be inspired by the flower that represents your birth month. Mine is a carnation... I don't love carnations, but I found a pretty digital stamp for free at Bird's Cards, so I went with a literal interpretation of the theme. I found a speckled variety of carnation that reminded me of our Pointillism tutorial, so I used that technique.

This is the image as I colored it... after I finished the blooms, I decided I didn't want to add any more color to it, so I left the stems white instead of moving on to green.

The image was cut into 9 squares using a Sizzix Gridworks (retired) die... I traced each opening with a mechanical pencil while the pieces were still in the die. Each square is layered onto a 1.5" Art Square from Inchie Arts. I intended to fit the image back together like it is above and put the sentiment in the upper left corner, but it didn't look right, so I did some shuffling until it looked balanced. The sentiment is from a Power Poppy set.

I've been working again this week on trying to index my unmounted stamps so I can catalog them using Evernote. I finally enlisted my daughter's help to stamp each image... we are up to almost 1200 stamps in the index, and we have so many more boxes to go... *sigh* But I'm hoping to have a system that is easy to navigate so someday I can have a sort of library and more open studio. We'll see what happens!

Have a wonderful weekend, and Happy Valentine's Day to you!

Splitcoast Tutorial: Interlocking Gate Card

This week's tutorial is a little twist on a classic gate fold card - Brenda Quintana, our guest author, calls it an Interlocking Gate Card and the latch is made with 2 slotted die cuts or punched pieces.

 Here's mine... I used shapes from a Sizzix steel rule die that came with my Big Shot Plus - it has a variety of flowers, hearts, leaves and a butterfly. I colored the die cuts loosely with Distress markers then spritzed to let the color run. The two flowers are offset just a turn, just to give the flower a little more dimension. I used a light tablet and grid template to mark my center lines and make sure the pieces were lined up together... that tool has come in handy in more ways than I thought it would!

The center pieces are slotted, one from the top and one from the bottom, so that they fit together to hold the card closed. It's a fun design! I like how the open card has a flower on each side.

Sometimes I add a little ladybug as a fun touch in my paintings - thought it would be fun to put one on a card. I drew the little head and antennas first, then glued the dew drop in place.

That's all I know! Hope you'll try this fun little card!

Kept - new art print!

I finished up a painting this weekend that was inspired by a few words of a Bible verse... "you who are kept." I found a few photos online that I fused together to create this little macro scene - I love how it turned out, and it was fun sharing my process as I went along (if you follow me on Facebook you'll know when I'm working on something new!).

I did some experimenting with masking fluid to create some visual depth in the nest - that was a lot of fun. The hard part was that the masking was the first thing I had to do on the painting, and I couldn't remove it until I had completed the background.

Here's what I had after removing the masking fluid - I was so excited to know that it worked! It was fun filling in all the white areas and adding detail and shading to the grass and twigs.

Here's the finished piece, and prints are available for preorder on my order page HERE. I'll plan on placing an order March 1st if there's interest, so please go ahead and reserve your copy if you'd like one by using the shopping cart there. I'll post a reminder when that date gets closer, in case some might want to order the lamb print in time for Easter.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Mix-Ability challenge: Fashion inspired

This week's Mix-Ability challenge is to be inspired by fashion in some way. I have been thoroughly fascinated by the latest men's release from Gucci - if you have seen it you will understand my fascination and confusion... anyway, when I saw the challenge theme, I knew I wanted to dig into that collection for my inspiration. Here's my card:

...and the outfit that inspired me. Words sort of fail.

photo source

The image I colored for my card is from a brand new coloring book from Katy Sue Designs - I just read that it will be released Feb. 10. It's beautiful! I started my coloring by filling in the image with my lightest shades using Touch markers.

To add shading, I used Prismacolor Pencils, layering colors and blending with light shades to pull the colors together. 

I started sponging the edges and realized I must have some grains of Brusho in my sponge... decided I liked that effect, and added some streaks to the background as well. I stamped some textured into the background to add to the vintage effect, too.

Hope you'll join us for the challenge - there are so many options!

Impression Obsession DT Challenge: Friends Forever

The Impression Obsession team's challenge today is to create a project celebrating friendship.

I used stamps from my Together Silhouettes clear set - my MISTI was so helpful for getting multiple impressions for great coverage as well as a 'kissed' layer of grey ink for texture (I inked a grid stamp and stamped it onto the stamp, then overstamped the image on my card).

I wanted to try a curved version of yesterday's Pleated Skirt Fold tutorial over on Splitcoast, so I used one of the dies from the Hill Landscape Layers set to cut the edge.

I wanted to use this grey cardstock for the pleats, so I stamped and sponged on the back side for a little contrast.

Be sure to check out these other designers' blogs for inspiration -

Anna @ Sassy & Sweet Notes
Daniela @ For the First Time
Dina @ Mama Dini's Stamperia ---- you're here
Jeanne @ Inky Paws
Jenny @ One Krafty Kat
Karen @ Paper Lilies and Ink
Kittie @ Kittie Kraft
Laura @ Laura's Stamp Art Journal
Vicki @ Summerthyme Studio

Remember you can enter these challenges too, using your Impression Obsession stamps! See the I.O. blog for all the details - you might even win a $25 gift certificate!! We'd love to have you join us.

Splitcoast Tutorial: Pleated Skirt Fold

This week's tutorial over on Splitcoast is a sweet and simple one - it's a Pleated Skirt Fold, and it's a cute and easy way to add a girly touch to a card front.

Because the folded strip is 3" wide, it was easy to cut a 12" piece of paper into multiple strips to make several cards at once - I made 4 identical cards in a really short amount of time.

I used one of my stamps, Brush Border, for a quick cross panel, then added some from a palette using a Distress marker and whatever was left on the palette from the last project. ;) The sentiment is from one of my clear sets, Warm Fuzzies Sentiments.

I used my fingers to fluff up the pleats a bit for an upgraded version - I can hand-deliver this one. The bow was tied with my Bow-Easy.

Hope you're having a great week!