Make a wish

I bought some watercolour card blanks recently with the idea that I could do watercolour stamping straight on the card base. I am posting my simple card for the Craft Barn weekly challenge (CAS), the Designs by Ryn customer creations challenge and the SimonSaysStamp Wednesday challenge (Anything goes).

Originally I was trying to make a card for a shrink plastic moth that I made with Ryns Moonwing stamps... the colours ended up being misfit, so I'm saving the shrink plastic for later :) I have stamped the solid hibiscus using Distress inks and a mist of water. I placed it so that it extends to the back of the card.

I made a mask and used a piece of scrap rubber to add some green on the background. The scrap rubber attaches to the TacknPeel block I use for unmounted stamps. I added Bundled Sage with an ink blender and spritzed with water before stamping. I added the sentiment with Aged Mahogany.

Compromises

I haven't done anything in my art journal all July. Gradually I started to realize the reason I was avoiding it was a very compromised spread I had done in a hurry and thought I could live with it... I couldn't. So I redid the page, and now am posting for the Country View July challenge (On your travels) and the SimonSaysStamp Wednesday challenge (Anything goes).

The DLP prompts in July have been about ephemera. I'm no good at that, but I travelled to Italy in June, and so I took out some maps and brochures and thought I'd build something around them. I got desperate and was in a hurry and ended up just "smashing" them in and telling myself to let it be and go on. The spread was ugly and terribly chunky, and it really bothered me, so I decided to think again. There were things I wanted to save: the map with the routes in town that I'd walked or biked, the brochures of a jazz concert and the foam rubber lollies given to me by the daughter of the house where I stayed. I ripped of the lollysticks and covered the spread with clear and white gesso and started a landscape with watercolours. I adhered just the foamrubber, not the sticks (to make the page less chunky), and decided on more white gesso so I could continue the landscape over the broschures. I finished with colour pencils and paint markers.

At least the result is much nicer than what the spread was, and I'm burning to start a new gesso+watercolour spread, the watercolour works in a lovely way!

Friends

The Craft Barn weekly challenge is CAS, and so I've been trying to do CAS on my projects for a change. Actually it has been lots of fun :) The Stampotique Designers challenge asks for Under the Sea projects, and since I have no Stampotique sea-stamps, I'm glad to use my Designs by Ryn Seahorses. Thus also posting for the Designs By Ryn customer creation challenge :)

The "Friends" diecut is from a Kaisercraft pouch that has been unused, because I don't really like these. I started by cutting out some more detail, the e and s had no holes in them, and I thought they wouldn't be recognizable after painting over. I covered the piece with gesso and white acrylic paint and eyeballed my seahorses in place.

After painting the text with FF Smurf, FF Southern skies and Golden Payne's Grey I set to work colouring the seahorses so they would match.  I just spent a day embellishing envelopes for a bunch of cards done this summer, so I'm trying now to do it straight away. I stamped the tiny seahorse on the envelope three times. I used Derwent Coloursoft pencils in several blue shades, burnishing with white to blend the blues and adding new layers until I was satisfied. The painted text was mounted on foam squares and placed on top of the seahorses.

See the beauty

The Stampotique Designers challenge #204 (twinchies) made me dig my stash, and I found a 2x6 panel with some bister that I thought would make 3 nice 2 inch squares. I forgot it on my desk for some time, since I needed a tall stamp that would stretch over the panel. After watching the prompt post for the Paperartsy Flower challenge I realized Jofy flowers are some of my largest stamps, and they'd be perfect for the job. I am also posting for the Craft Barn weekly challenge (CAS).

I stamped the Jofy flowers with Archival Watering Can and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. The background has a touch of red bister, I added Aged Mahogany Distress ink to the flowers and the edges of the squares, I think they fit nicely together. While I had the stamp out, I stamped it on an envelope using Tattered Rose, Aged Mahogany and a light mist of water. Nice and subtle.

I stamped the beginning of the two-line sentiment that comes with these plants, it's quite fun like that! The twinchies are mounted with small foam squares, and I'm calling it done :)

Woyww -it's wednesday again!

Time again for the one and only woyww-desk hop, hosted by Julia. My desk today is quite clean... on it I have a bunch of recent cards, for which I'm making coordinated envelopes. Usually I try to do them along with the card, but I noticed I've been slipping a bit.In the center you can see my TacknPeel block, that I use for totally unmounted rubber.

As for my "new" crafty space... I went to Ikea and got myself one more drawer unit, so there are two on the right, and I found a small one that fits under the table. I'm gradually remembering what I have and where. To my dissapointment I haven't been able to get rid of all my cardboard boxes... I already gave up on that, some serious destash must happen before that's possible!  But I got my socks done, just need to finish the ends :)

Destashing again

I am very attracted by mixed media CAS... Lots of white and some splatters. I'm not sure if it really is clean or simple, but it's the picture I have in my mind when I hear the word CAS. I have seldom done it, the few times I've tried have been messed up by a dirty fingerprint or the like. Besides, working straight on the card base makes me nervous... but here's a try. I'm really enjoying the Craft Barn CAS challenge, I still have many ideas lurking at the back of my head, to be seen how many I get done :)

I started this card by checking through a drawer with diecuts. I bought this pack because of the lovely name "Magnolia Grove" at a time when I thought I wanted to do smashbooking. To my dissapointment the pack has no magnolias, just roses or peonies, the colours are drab and the diecuts are clumsily cut and too large - they are obviously planned for 12x12 layouts.

I took the Love text, finding it would  fit on a 5x7 card base. I painted over the diecut with white gesso, FF Banana and Golden Quinadicrone red, trying to spread the paint in nice thick layers so the brush strokes are visible. While I was at it I also splattered some diluted paint on the card base.

The splatters were so small, they felt inadequate, and I stamped with a splattery coffee ring stamp using the same paints. Acrylics dry so fast I was worried about my stamp, but luckily a "brush and stencil cleaning solution" proved to work on rubber too. The orange on the text has been scribbled with colour pencils, I was surprised how well it applied to the acrylics!

Thinking of you

I had several experiments running on my table at the same time and so it just happened that they ended up on the same card. I'm posting for the Paperartsy challenge (flowers) and the Stampotique Designers challenge (backgrounds stamped with household items).

After watching the prompt video for the PA Flower challenge I dug out my HotPick mini daisy stamp and tried stamping it with Distress markers and a "huff". The result wasn't as nice as I wished, too dry and not very much contrast in the greens, even though I'd used different ones to colour them. I blended part of the dryness away with a waterbrush, and pushed them aside waiting for further inspiration.

I started experimenting with bubble backgrounds according to the instructions on this post. Quite fun, and not as messy as I expected :) I used Mowed Lawn reinker and a few different cardstocks. The most absorbent one gained the brightest green, the coated cardstocks muted towards blue. I'll admit, I didn't remember that the Stampotique challenge was asking for stamping, I only thought about the household materials... but in a way these are stamped = with bubbles, so I'm claiming it's ok.

After taking the picture I added more bubbles in Squeezed Lemonade. On the absorbent cardstock, the bubbles spread in a watercolour way, on the coated cardstock they give really refined bubbleprints. I ended up using the brightest background (lower right) for this project. Looking at my backgrounds I decided to continue with the Distress marker stamping on my Stampotique image. This time I gave the stamp a light mist of water after colouring, and the image was as perfect as I might wish for.

I fussy cut the darker daisy, thinking it might fit with the boy... and ended up using both of the flowers! I'm not sure I know any boys for whom this colour scheme might fit, but I do think the card is bright and fun :)

A Jar full of sunshine

The Art Journey July challenge is "at least 50% white". I've had this idea of a butterfly in a jar for some time, and since the Craft Barn happens to be asking for CAS this week, now was the time to get this done! 

I stamped the mason jar through the window of a card base from my destash pile. This way it was easy to place in the middle. I cleaned my stamp by taking a second imprint on scrap paper, because I wanted a mask. I stamped the butterfly in the jar and added touches of colour with colour pencils. I cut out the mask, wanting to use the hole to protect the cardbase around the jar, dabbed the jar with Versamark and triple embossed with clear embossing powder. It made that part of the card base curve strongly backward creating an interesting 3d effect! 

The used stamps are from Art Journey (nl). The jars came with the sentiment "A jar full of sunshine"... I decided to use it on the envelope. I'm feeling a bit sorry for the butterfly, but I'm sure someone will open the jar and let her out now that the pictures are taken :)

A beach hut

When the Craft Barn July calendar prompts (turqoise and beach huts) were published I had to do a Google search on beach huts :) I realized that the reason Finland doesn't have that kind of a tradition is, that most families have solitary beach huts somewhere = I'd hate to be cramped in a row on a crowdy beach... We don't have a hut of our own, but we have three that run in the family and are at our disposal. My favourite one is the simplest one: a room and sauna, no electricity or running water, but just two metres from the shore of a clean clear lake (no tides here). I've been using old bookpaper (from around 1860) on all the pages of this calendar, and so I'm also posting for the SimonSaysStamp Monday challenge (no ordinary paper)

I started with Turqoise Brusho (can't really see the difference to light blue?), added green Dylusions sprays through TCW Sea bubbles stencil and birch trees with Grunge paste.

If it wasn't for the CB challenge, I would have left this like this. I love the light etheric feeling, like midsummer night... (even though that was in June)... But this is a challenge, I had to add the old bookpaper I've used on all the other pages of this calendar and the beach hut. I made the book paper the ground and used Heavy Gloss Gel and a drop of Salty Ocean reinker to make the water -it really looks so wet, it begs to be touched!

The previous pages for this calendar can be found here:
January
February
March
April
May
June

Siivoilua

Paskiksessa pyydetään noudattamaan luonnosta, ja sehän sopii! Selailin jo muita tuotoksia, ja huomasin, etten ole ainoa, jolla on siivousinto päällä :)

Vaihdoin järjestystä, ja sen seurauksena sain vakavan muistutuksen kaikenlaisesta mitä on joskus tullut ostettua, muttei oikein käytettyä. Minulla on laatikollinen erilaisia. valmiiksi painettuja leikekuvia... Tosin näitä eläin- ja leluaiheisia on ollut yleensäkin helpoin käyttää, paljon hankalampaakin tavaraa löytyy :(  Nyt sain yhdestä pussista napattuja elementtejä käytettyä kolme kappaletta. Samalla korttiin upposi pari paperinpalaa, jotka ihmeen kaupalla sopivat kuvien kanssa yhteen. Siivoilun helpottamiseksi olen pyrkinyt kasaamaan yhteen vetolaatikkoom "poistolaarin", josta yritän joka tilaisuuden tullen napata jotain, jos mahdollista... Kuten siis nuo taustapaperit ja tuo kultainen korttipohja. 

Rock (?) around the clock

Lots of watercolourstamping with Distress markers added up to quite a beautiful card!  I'm posting for the Rubberdance July challenge (off white, forget-me-not blue, cinnamon brown), the Craft Barn weekly challenge (circle + flowers) and the Paperartsy challenge (time).

I wanted to try new colour combintions on the Dancing lady stamp from Rubberdance. I planned to restamp the flower bouquet to make a garland... But after stamping her, I thought the flowers in the bouquet looked very much like the flowers on a Paperartsy hotpick sheet. I loved the colourful altered clock on this post on the PA blog. I decided to stamp a clock onto my card and build the garland around it. 

Watercolour stamping with Distress markers

Clockface (VivaLasVegaStamps) heat embossed with
Mixed Media Ink's Honey

Everything in place ready for adhering

As a finishing touch I stamped the whole hotpick flower on my envelope. They looked a bit lonely, so I continued with a harlequin stamp (Rubberdance).