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

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!

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!

Here's a closer look at the ground there - and I love that little bunny just waiting for a pat on the head!

Products I used:

from A Colorful Life Designs 

(use code DinaFan10 for 10% off your order!)

021167 Turbulent Waters stencil

021161 Hanging Vines

from Topflight Stamps

(use code YAYDINA! for 12% off your order!)

Hobby Art Stamps - Dandelion Wishes

LAV422 Eden

LAV581 Pipin

Hope you'll join along with the challenge this week! Have a great weekend!

Topflight Stamps 4th Bday Blog Hop

It's Topflight Stamps' 4th birthday!  They are celebrating with a fun blog hop, and they invited me to hop too - how fun is that?! If you're not familiar with Topflight Stamps, I hope you'll check out their site - they carry hard-to-find and beautiful products from all over the world, bringing them to one place so we can buy them soooo easily. 

They're heroes.

Today, I hope you'll enjoy the hop! Everyone has made a beautiful project or two with a birthday theme to celebrate. If you're already hopping, you should have arrived here from Jennie Atkinson's blog. If not, you might want to start at the Topflight Stamps blog to take it from the top!

I have 2 cards to share, because I got excited about the choices! 

I thought a "Make a Wish" theme would be fun for a birthday celebration, so I went down a rabbit hole of dandelion stamps - there are some gorgeous sets as well as a few of my favorite Lavinia fairies to choose from!  I began by layering in the dandelion images from this gorgeous Hobby Art set in pale hybrid inks, building up a moody background. I sponged and watercolored from the bottom edge to ground the scene, then added more stamping in darker colors to build up the foreground. I tore a piece of junk mail to create a mask for the ground and brushed grey ink along the bottom.

The darker stamping is done with Versafine Clair ink in grey. On the centers of the dandelions I dotted with a paint pen and then with acrylic paint for a little brighter effect. If you were holding the card, you'd see where I made a little glitter trail where she's blowing - it's very sweet and sparkly and hard to photograph! 

I added a little curve to the banner - and I love that tiny little seed floating above the 'i' in wish! Beautiful stamp set.

While I was looking at Lavinia stamps, my jaw dropppppped at the sight of this gorgeous moth stamp, so I had to have it too - I'm recently obsessed with moths, especially these beautiful and rare lunas, and the detail on this stamp is just fabulous. This is a slimline card too (3.5" x 8.5") so you can see it's a really large image as well!

I stamped the moth in Versafine Clair ink and embossed with clear powder, then misted the panel with water and did a broad watercolor wash. To add texture to the painted area, I laid a piece of bubble wrap over the paper for a few minutes... normally I'd let it dry overnight but I didn't have that much time! It still added some neat texture to the background. (If you'd like to see a tutorial with more ideas for that technique, I have a really fun one HERE.)

I added a little shadowing with a Copic marker and some colored pencils to pop the moth a little. The sentiment is from a block of birthday sentiments made by Darkroom Door, another favorite company! 

Topflight Products I used:

Hobby Art Stamps - Dandelion Wishes

Lavinia Stamps - Josie (fairy)

Lavinia Stamps - Indra (luna moth)

Darkroom Door - Happy Birthday

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NOW for the fun stuff!! Of course, it wouldn’t be a birthday celebration without prizes! 

Topflight Stamps is giving one lucky winner a $100 Gift Certificate to the store. But wait, there is more, each stop on the hop (even mine!!) 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 March 29th. Winners will be announced on the Topflight Stamps blog on March 31st. Good Luck!

If you can't wait to shop, go nowwww - the entire store is 20% off!

From here you'll be hopping on to Kathi Rerek's blog - thank you for visiting me today!

Splitcoast Tutorial: Mixative Marbling

It's my turn to post a tutorial over at Splitcoast, and I'm sharing my experiments with Mixative Marbling! I picked up a couple of bottles of the Mixative recently and this was really my first experiment with the medium at all. It's possible I'm the last person in the world to know that they can be floated on water for marbling, but I hope this is something new to someone else too! It's a very easy technique and the results are stunning. 

 I tried the technique on dark and light cardstock, watercolor paper, photo paper, and matboard! It will also work on non-porous surfaces - I marbled a plastic egg that has a surface like a ping pong ball. You can also use regular alcohol inks or mix the 2 together for more colorful results.

Shapeabilities - First Friends

This background was done on dark cardstock - it's actually a dark purple/interference cardstock I bought overseas (and have been hoarding) - I marbled it with silver and gold Mixatives. 

The moon piece is watercolor paper, marbled in silver.

DIE548-Z Lighthouse Circle
B1143 Thinking of You

The background piece on this card is navy cardstock - I used mostly the gold Mixative here, but there were a few flecks of silver left from the previous dip.

This next card was done using brown alcohol ink (Teakwood) along with the gold Mixative. 

H8722 Full Bloom Hollyhocks
LAV136A Three Dancing Fairies
(sentiment is discontinued from Crafter's Companion)

I don't have very many alcohol inks or reinkers, but I love this effect - I'll definitely be experimenting more!  Side note - I love fairy stamps, and I have been wanting to start collecting Lavinia Stamps for a while - I decided to focus on the fairies and animals, and use stamps from my collection for the scenes. Love these mini ones! They are in stock at Topflight Stamps now, and you can use my code YAYDINA! for a 12% discount if you just might need some too.

I have one other sample using alcohol inks I'll be sharing in another post! If you have these supplies I hope you'll try this one - head over to the Splitcoast channel to check out the video!

Splitcoast Tutorial: Thumping

For this week's tutorial over on Splitcoast we decided to give the old Thumping tutorial some new life! Lydia shares a way to use this technique with layering stamps to give them a little more dimension.

I decided to work with some solid stamps instead - I have started collecting Lavinia Stamps, and I fell in love with this Hedgehog set ("The Wallace Family"~! Acckkk!)

I started with the background, brushing various green inks and then stenciling with the Arty Circles stencil I used yesterday from Darkroom Door. I stamped the hedgies in a light tan, then used 3 different brown watercolor markers for the Thumping technique on their little backs. I added more dimension to their bodies with colored pencil and then a little acrylic paint, since the green was showing through just a little through the dye ink.

Across the top, I brayered a little white acrylic paint to break up the color - this sentiment has been on my mind, and it's one of mine from Impression Obsession.

Remember that Impression Obsession and Topflight Stamps both have 25% discounts this week!

That's all I know!