Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Topflight Stamps Hop - Happy 5th Birthday!

It's Topflight Stamps' 5th birthday and to celebrate, I’ve teamed up with some great designers to showcase celebratory projects using the unique products available at Topflight Stamps. Please hop with us and see all the beautiful talent from this group of amazing designers - I love being invited to hop along! If you're not familiar with Topflight Stamps, they have the most amazing collection of hard-to-get products from outside the US all in one convenient online shop!

If you're already hopping you should have arrived here from Kathi Rerek's blog. If you came to my blog because you're a follower and you want to view the full hop, click on over to the Topflight Stamps Blog for the full list!

I combined several sets to make this fairy scene, and fully enjoyed the process of layering brushed inks and stamped images. I started by stamping the characters lightly to orient my scene, then masked the ground to focus on the background first. Once I had all the background foliage in, I brushed in the ground and restamped the characters in black. Next I framed in the scene with black grass and branches, and added in highlights with a white Posca pen.

I loved adding all the details, but what really makes this scene is the warm yellow glow from the lantern! Mostly Versafine Clair there.

I couldn't stop with one card - I had to have this 80's-loving lemur stamp... I mean... do you have one? He's amazing.

Coloring is done with layered watercolors, and I added more fur details and shadows with colored pencils. I watercolored through a stencil to create the background. I'll link all the Topflight products below!

Find it at Topflight Stamps!

Lavinia - Pan

Lavinia - Flip

Hobby Art Stamps - A5 - Garden of Wonders

Hobby Art Stamps - A5 - Dandelion Wishes

Studio Light - A6 - Just Lou - Aviation 10 (disc.)

Darkroom Door - Sentiment Strip Stamps - Happy Birthday

Darkroom Door - Small Stencil - Polka Dots

Carabelle Studio - The 80s Lemur - Marty Crouz

But wait! There's more!

It wouldn’t be a birthday celebration without prizes! Topflight Stamps is giving one lucky winner a $50 Gift Certificate to the store. In addition, each stop on the hop has an additional $25 Gift Certificate up for grabs for some lucky commenter!

For a chance to win, make sure to visit every stop on the hop and leave a comment by April 3rd - more comments = more chances to win! Winners will be announced on the Topflight Stamps blog on April 7th. Good Luck!

There's also a sale to celebrate the big day - 20% off, no code necessary! (Please note - Topflight is only able to ship to the US and Canada at this time.)

Here's the rest of the hop list - carry on for more celebration and inspiration!

the Topflight blog
Kathi Rerek
Dina Kowal <<<<<<< you're here!
Esther Asbury
Annette Allen
Jennie Atkinson
Rachel Kleinman
Connie Mercer
Charmaine Canham
Lisa Hoel
Jenny Marples
Cornelia Wenokor
Rachel Greig
Ericka Strange
Karen Bearse
Melina Dahl
Autumn Clark
Maria Willis
Angela Myhre

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop through the affiliate links used here, the company sends a small commission my way at no cost to you as thanks for the referral.
It's a lovely way to partner with these companies that mean so much to our creative community. Everybody wins!

Thursday, May 06, 2021

Mix-Ability - 5x7!

It's my turn to host the Mix-Ability challenge over at Splitcoast this week - since the challenge is scheduled for 5/7, the challenge is to create a 5"x7" mixed media piece!

I've been playing with this month's stencil release from A Colorful Life Designs - quite a few of the stencils this month have a beachy theme which is always fun - but I pulled a couple of the stencils 'out of the box' for this little fairy scene. I took a couple of pictures mid-process so you could see the stencils in the background - they add so much but got a little covered with the stamping. There are several layers of the vines across the top, and I built up from light to dark, flipping the stencil back and forth to create more variation in the directions of the vines.

The stencil I used for the ground is actually meant to be used for waves but it made some pretty cool dirt piles! I taped off a section to stencil, and then tucked my panel through one of the openings that went all the way across, and added one more wider section. I used a pencil to shade the bottom of a few of the horizontal sections, then inked up my blender brushes again to deepen the edges of the panel. (This is a 5"x7" backer board that I use for packaging my art prints - it's somewhere between matboard and chipboard.)

I had fun with the stamping - I started with the fairy and bunny, and then framed them in with the dandelions and grass (all stamps are from Topflight Stamps - I will link them below!). I might have gone a little overboard with the splattering, but it was fun!