Splitcoast Tutorial: Candy Flower Garden

 This week's tutorial over on Splitcoast is this adorable Candy Flower Garden! The stems of the flowers are made with 1" cello bags filled with plain M & Ms, which is just so fun and cute.

I used this Sizzix Bigz die for all my die cuts (except the fence) - this is a large steel rule die that comes in the Big Shot Plus bundle, and it worked perfectly for this project - I used everything but the hearts! I cut the shapes from watercolor paper and sprayed them with Colorbox Spritzers for a super quick coloring job. The sentiment is from a Penny Black clear set.

The box goes together really quickly, and this is a really cute project for a table favor or a desktop pick-me-up gift.

I've been working on commissions and on a personal project during my work days... here's the dog I'm working on - she's an Australian Shepherd, and just such a beautiful animal. This is the largest single dog portrait I've done so far - it's 11" x 14".

Also - there is a local art show in about a month and I need to have this large piece DONE by then, so it's filling a lot of my thoughts!

That's all I know!

Splitcoast Tutorial: Faux Stamped Leather

This week's tutorial over on Splitcoast is a fun technique called Faux Stamped Leather - it recreates the look of debossed leather using cardstock, a stylus, and sponged inks.

Instead of stamping a solid image, I used a holly stencil from Penny Black and filled in the image with a sepia Pitt marker. I sponged chalk inks onto the panel after tracing the outline with a stylus. I love the rustic look! This technique can be taken to another level too - check out Melissa's scenic card here! Amazing.

Hope you'll try this out!

Holiday Blitz Tutorial: Screen Divider Card

Today's tutorial is a great one to use all year long - these Screen Divider Cards are easy to make for any occasion, and easy to mass-produce too.  I used a Penny Black stamp from this year's Christmas release to decorate my panels... I cut them before really thinking - next time I'll stamp and paint first, and then divide the full panel into 4.

I used a Spellbinders die to cut my legs - I lined it up on the sticky side of a Post-It note, and then used the edge of the paper to align the die each time. That worked pretty well!

The openings at the top were cut with an Impression Obsession Fancy Cutout Border die.

These cards would be a great way to use up a stack of backgrounds, like the file of gel prints I have... I think 4 narrow photos would be cute for a family Christmas card too.

The card folds up to fit into an A2 envelope with its 5-1/2" height - it would be easy to adjust the height and measurements to fit other envelope sizes as well - maybe a tri-fold for a business envelope? Next time.

Join us all this week for beautiful holiday tutorials during our Holiday Blitz event!

Splitcoast Tutorial: Masking Alternatives

Today's tutorial over at Splitcoaststampers is brought to us by Jennifer McGuire. If you'd like to learn her methods for masking images without having to fussy-cut a paper mask, click over to her Masking Alternatives tutorial!

I loved her results using rubber cement, but I don't have any so I used the masking fluid that I picked up a few weeks ago. I did my masking in stages, painting the rose first and then masking it and the flourishes around it so I could paint my bird freely with blues and not worry about bleeding. With the whole image masked, I sprayed yellow mist over the image, then brushed and blew in some branches on the background, stenciled with watercolors, and splattered some gold acrylic paint over the panel. The masking fluid rubbed off easily, and my scene was done! Love that stuff. One tip if you do use masking fluid - be sure the paper beneath the masked area is completely dry before you remove the dried fluid! I've ruined several panels in the past because I was impatient.

These stamps (Bird Collage 4 and She Has Wings) are my designs from one of my first releases with Impression Obsession, and this card is for my dear friend Bridget's Hope You Can Cling To challenge to be inspired by an everyday hero.

Join us!

Clearsnap and Penny Black

This month I've had the chance to play around with some new products from Penny Black, as well as the Graphic 45 Decades inks from Clearsnap. Just for fun, I thought I'd share what happened when I put those products all together!

These are the Decades inks, which are great vintage-colored dye inks made to coordinate with Graphic 45's beautiful vintage paper lines. They seem to be typical dye pads, great for stamping and other ink techniques. For these 2 cards, I made myself a little watercolor palette by pressing the inkpads against a clean acrylic block. I used a waterbrush to pick up the inks and paint the stamped images on watercolor paper.

The watercolor image (Red Star) below was stamped using Triumphant Red ink, and then blended and painted over with the other inks on the palette. I sponged around the edge as well, then stamped the sentiment.

Here's a closer look at the flower - it was fun going out of the lines on the branches, and blending the inks for different hues.

I used a different poinsettia (Sparkler) for the second card. The background was made by laying the watercolor panel several times into diluted Venetian Lace ink, drying in between applications. I stamped the flowers in red, and then watercolored and splattered the inks over the panel.

I dotted gold acrylic paint in the flower centers and also randomly over the card.

Hope you have a great week!

Mix-Ability - nondominant hand doodling

It's my turn to host the Mix-Ability challenge this week! I'm pushing everyone out of their comfort zones this week... the challenge is to add some doodles to your mixed-media project using your non-dominant hand. I read an article recently where the author talks about using the non-dominant hand "to silence our inner critic" - in her exercise she outlined images with her left hand, and found that instead of drawing from memory she was really forced to look at the actual objects she was drawing. That helped her to really see the object, and let go of her usually 'programmed' process. Interesting!

I didn't draw an outlined image on my card but I did add some gold highlights to the petals of a debossed poinsettia. I am a recovering perfectionist, and I loved the looseness that I was able to achieve with my right hand on these lines.

Here's the full card - the poinsettia outline was made with a gorgeous new die from Penny Black, which I debossed into a Fabriano watercolor card. I used watercolors to layer color into the outline until I got the effect I wanted.

More shading and shadows were added with a water-soluble graphite pencil. To add more texture to the background, I flicked a waterbrush over the tip of the graphite pencil, and also rolled a roll of drywall tape  through some wet graphite and then onto the card.

Come and play!

Splitcoast Tutorial: Stamp Etching

This week's tutorial is from our own Lydia Fiedler - it's a technique she calls Stamp Etching. To add dimension and detail to stamped images, you sketch in lines for shading. I used a Penny Black stamp for my sample - I love these large format stamps and the open areas of this one were just perfect.

My card started off as a square Fabriano card that was printed using Brusho Crystal Colors and an embossing folder from Crafter's Companion. It had gotten buried on my desk during Dare To Get Dirty - I actually meant to use it for one of the challenges! I stamped the flowers, added the etching lines, and then masked each flower and leaf using a Sakura Glaze Pen.

I added a wash of dye ink over the coloring, and the glaze resisted the ink. While it was still wet, I spun my roll of drywall tape through it to lightly spread the color and add some texture.

The sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp - love it! Hope you'll give this technique a try.... just because you're amazing!

Mix-Ability - Reverse Masking

It's my turn to host the Mix-Ability challenge, and this week's challenge is to use Reverse Masking on a mixed media project. Usually when we mask an image, we're covering it up to fill in areas around it. In reverse masking (also called mortise masking), we want to fill in the area inside the image, so we cover up the areas around it. There's a video on the challenge post explaining more.

Here's the card I made for my gallery sample, and if you'd like to watch me creating it, scroll down and enjoy a sped-up video from start to finish.

I used Penny Black's "Poppy Time" stamp as my focal image - the bloom is such a great size for this technique. You'll see in the video how I used regular masking and reverse masking to complete the scene.

Mixed media work uses at least 2 different kinds of art media... I used spray inks, chalk inks, watercolor and acrylic paints, and acrylic paint markers.

Here's the video - enjoy! Then come play along with us!