For A Friend - Blossom Branch Penny Black

Hi Everybody,

This is the first card I've made since I had knee surgery!  Yay!  I almost feel 'normal' again. Yep, I've been getting my retail therapy on the last few weeks so I have lots of new stamps and dies to play with.  Here's one of them....

I love the size of this stamp, it's large enough to take up an entire card front.  This is from Penny Black called Blossom Branch.  I went back to an oldie but goodie technique and colored the stamp with markers.  I have Memento brand.  I spritzed the stamp hoping for more of a watercolor effect but didn't have much luck moving the ink so I just filled in the bare spots with the markers.  

I stamped the sentiment with Versafine Onyx Black ink which I love to use when I'm using watercolor paper because I know I can still get a crisp image on the textured paper.  

I used Brutus Monroe Embossing Ink and Gilded Embossing Powder for the dots.  I used two sets of dots, one is from the Hello Lovely set from Concord & 9th and the other is from the MFT set that the sentiment came from.  I bought this set on a FB group sales page so I'm not sure of the name.  

To finish it off, I put some gold washi tape down the side of the card base and trimmed my watercolor paper layer to fit.

It's so great to be back at this. I hope you like my card and please stop by again soon. 

Thanks and have a great day!

Regina

The Quickest, Easiest Card Using Zig Markers

Hi Everybody,

Who wants to know how to make the quickest card ever but still look pretty and like you put some time into it?  ME!  I saw a video on how to use Zig Markers and water spritzed to get a beautiful card by Laurel Beard so I tried it and it works!  

I used a Wink of Stella clear glitter brush pen on the petals but you can't see much of it in this pic.

So all you do is stamp or emboss your image on the Bristol Smooth or Watercolor Paper.  This is the first time I've tried this and I used Bristol only because I already had an image stamped on it but next time I will try watercolor paper.  Next, you take a few Zig Markers and literally scribble over the different sections of your image and you can mix colors, it doesn't matter where you put the ink. 

When everything is covered on the embossed or stamped image, spritz heavily with water everywhere you have Zig Marker ink and then watch the beauty happen.  You can pick it up and let the ink roll around.  I even took some of the droplets that fell off the card and used a medium sized, flat paint brush and I put some of the ink back onto the card, just some of the background and some around the edges.  Then I let it dry.  You can heat set it as well.

The floral image is from Altenew called Persian Motifs.  I embossed these with Ranger Silver Pearl embossing powder.  I love this color so much because it's softer than white.  The sentiment is from Concord & 9th called Hello Lovely.  I love the size and font of the word Lovely here.  I stamped that with Versafine Onyx Black ink and embossed with WOW clear embossing powder.  I added a few clear sequins from Pretty Pink Posh to finish it off.

The bottom layer is an orchid color from Gina K Designs but it was a limited edition color a long time ago. I wish she would bring it back since purples are being used so much in watercolor, oxide inks, etc.   Since quite a bit of the bottom layer was showing I decided to go around the edges with Versamark ink and use clear embossing powder, I stamped one of the flowers from Persian Motif.  It's so pretty! It's subtle but adds a lot when you look at the entire card all together.  

So that's my easiest, quickest card ever.  I think I'll go through and make up a bunch of these to have on hand for cards.  I hope I inspired you to get your Zigs out and start scribbling!  :)  

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!


Regina

Hello Lovely Thank You Card

Hi Everybody,

I love to color flowers.  Normally my stamp will be one flower, maybe three or to have more, I'll have to mask them.  Well, today my card shows a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Concord & 9th and I didn't even have to mask them all.  The stamp set is called Hello Lovely and it is just that, such a lovely set.  What I like about it is the gorgeous bouquet but also you can stamp out layered flowers for a watercolor effect, and the sentiments will fit any card, plus the cool splatter marks stamp is a bonus.

I actually did a little bit of masking with this card using post it tape to cover right along the edges of where I was going to be overlapping.  You can stamp this bouquet across your stamp, hang it off the side of your card in one or two places, do what I did here and stamp 2 bouquets together.  If you cut them right you can get 2 cards out of it as well.  Who doesn't love that right?

 

There is a lot going on in this card for sure but isn't it cool!  I used Zig Real Brush Watercolor Markers to color the flowers.  I did use a paintbrush and water because my water brush was putting out too much water.  I know it is quite vibrant but I wanted a bright, summery, happy result.  I embossed it with one of my most favorite embossing powders, Ranger Silver Pearl.  This is softer than white, it's so beautiful in real life.  I used Canson Montval watercolor paper, which I like to use with Zigs.  After I painted the background and everything dried, what did I do??  I threw water droplets on it lol.  I sprayed some water into my hand from my mister and dropped it out onto the card.  They came out a little bit larger than I wanted on the purple flower but I think it looks good.

That's the cool thing about working with water, you never know what you're going to get.  And, yes, I have to admit, I tend to use watercolors sometimes as I would Copics, which I kind of did here.  A different mentality is needed when watercoloring. Forget everything you know, loosen up and let the water do most of the work for you. I haven't fully give up control to the water yet, but I'm getting there. :)

We went out to dinner last weekend with some family on my husband's side and his Mom paid for it which was so generous.  I wanted to make her a beautiful thank you card and this is it.  I used Versafine Onyx Black to emboss the Thanks sentiment and I needed some filler around it and low and behold, they included a stamp in this set that was perfect, splatters!  You can use this on so many cards.  If you are not comfortable splattering black paint, gold paint, etc., on your cards, use this stamp (see the pic above, it's at the top in the middle, splatter dots).  I LOVE IT!  I embossed these using Stampendous Detail Fine Gold Embossing Powder.  I took little pieces of scotch tape and covered some of the dots where I wanted just a few from the stamp.  When you do this, use the tape to cover the parts (of any stamp) that you don't want to cover with ink, ink it up, then take the tape off, and stamp.  I used a gold metallic pen to put some little gold dots in the centers of the flowers to tie it all in together.  

You really get your $$$ worth out of this stamp set.  I've got some ideas that I'm going to be trying with the bouquet in the near future as well.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Regina