by Susan Itell | Sep 23, 2017 | Fall Cards |
Good morning and happy weekend to everyone…Well, the calendar says that it’s fall but it sure still feels like summer on the East Coast! I don’t know about you but hands-down – fall is my favorite time of the year. When I simply hear the words “Fall” I automatically think of beautiful leaves, apples, cooler temperatures, and comfort food!
Do you remember back in the spring… Sarah had a paper pumpkin called it’s a Sarah thing! It was one hot paper pumpkin and I sure did stock up on the refills.It was so much fun because she used a technique with clear embossed images and then using watercolor crayons to blend colors together.
In today’s card I am doing something something similar but I’m using ink pads instead of the watered colored pencils today and I will show you how you can stamp the leaves from the Colorful Seasons Bundle to make the fun!
Below you can see the beautiful colors that truly remind you have a spectacular Fall scene. The colors that I used were Cajun Craze, Cherry Cobbler, and Crushed Curry. Today, I did use the watercolor paper as using watercolor paper is essential to have super blending.
Very Vanilla is my card base color as I like the softness of the the very vanilla with the fall leaves. when I see this card I smile as it truly reminds me of doing projects with my children when they were younger with coloring. Let’s get going!
I bet you’re looking at this picture and going YIKES – this looks like a MESS!!!! Hang tight as we all know there sometimes that you need to make a mess to make a beauty 🙂
All I did was stamp the leaf image on watercolor paper and heat set it with clear embossing powder. I do recommend using the embossing buddy to make sure you do not have any stray powder going where you do not want it!
Now for the fun… Grab yourself a little cup of water and a paint brush.
1 – Wet the entire area that has been heat embossed with clear water.
2 – Now, dab your paint brush into a little of the ink and simply tap it over the embossed image as shown below. This is where the magic happens as you will see the colors blend together.You will have to just play around with color combinations to get the look that you were going for.
The one color I absolutely adore but you have to be careful with that is the color of yellow.You need to “protect the yellow” as it has a tendency to get muddy and change color if you add too many other colors right next to it.
This is such a fun technique to play around with and just have fun with color. After I have colored my images I then cut them out with Mr. Big – super easy and fast.
Hopefully you can tell in the pictures that I have allowed some movement to the top of the leaves. I achieved this look by just simply using glue dots towards the bottom of each leaf to anchor them to my card. This way you can kind of pulled the ends of the leaves to make them look more natural and free-flowing.
By now you know I adore sentiments and simplicity. I could not resist using this sentiment which is from the Dragonfly Dreams stamp set. I invite you to make sure that you remember to blend stamp sets together to achieve a fun look when you are creating a card.
To me it is the sentiment that makes a card special and unique. I felt that the font typeset went well with the feeling of fall and “movement of leaves” cascading down!
If you or anything like me, we tend to use stamps that are super current like from our new catalog… (naturally that makes sense) but please do not forget we have so many good “old faithful’s” that have carried over and they need love as well!
Now I ask you,imagine if I did not use the embossing folder with this card. True… It would still look beautiful but the feel from the embossing folder gives it a rustic and natural look. This embossing folder is called the pinewood planks. They sure do add a lot of texture to a card with minimal effort and they’re so affordable.
Another tip I wanted to point out to you is look how your eye takes the whole card in from the top to the bottom. By creating different focal images throughout the card it allows your eye to naturally go up and down and take it all in.
Also, grouping images in clusters of odd numbers also help to make your eyes naturally take it all in! Are you wondering about the embellishments? These are called “dew drops” that I have in my embellishment stash that I think are fun to add a bit of bling.
Well….thoughts? I hope I’ve been able to explain to you that using a technique like this is not only fun… It is easy. I think sometimes it is great to be able to pull out an old technique and put it back into use.
I invite you to look at your stamp sets and images to see other Images that leaves and figure out a way to use it with this technique. Here’s an idea… What about taking a large heart and stamping either a geometrical image or possibly some for small flowers/hearts to it and then use this technique. Hmmmmm…..I think I have an idea for a future post!
Enjoy your day, and many thanks for popping in! I hope you have a fabulous day…
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Susan Itell | Sep 11, 2017 | Fall Cards, Uncategorized |
Hello and here is to a NEW week……Hen peckin’ pinkie here! Now I have a WOWZER for you today (and I hope that you feel the same) I am trying to focus a bit more on “techniques” to teach you and I hope that you are a sponge and soak this up!
I will be limited on words but I have some great pictures for you! Please feel free to leave a comment – I do hope that you try this as it if not only FUN but it is something that you can do with so many framelits…..
This bundle, Colorful Seasons is truly one for ALL seasons. I know that this has been blogged a bunch when it first came out…..so I waited until I had a WOW and I really like this fun and modern layout.
The layout is one that you can use with soooooo many colors and soooooo many different themes but here are (2) key products to make this a fun process.
1 – The Multipurpose Adhesive Sheets – why? – I adhere the card stock to it and then trimmed off the excess. This made it so easy to adhere it all to 1 piece. I first added the adhesive sheet to a piece of printer paper (that was 5 1/2″ X 4 1/4″) because it was super thin and I knew that I needed to cut through the cardstock, the printer paper and the adhesive sheet with the die cut.
2 – The Grid Paper – After I exposed the sticky side that was on the printer paper….I could use the grid paper to line up the card stock to ensure the lines would be straight….
You can see that I made (2) of these cards….and I tried to make the color scheme very different and unique….To me, it still is super clean but there is a fun and unique twist.
The other learning curve is the embossing. I love to heat emboss and I know that the WOW is always there with you as well, it is magic! The key is to heat emboss 2 times .I tried 3 and it was a mess…the details of this die cut were just too intricate. Trust me on this one. Below is a collage that I put together for you.
You will see that in the last picture they are warped…no worries – just put them in a book and they will get flat in no time. By doing many layers of embossing…the effect turns into a totally different look and feel of how we regularly emboss…making it an embellishment of metal fun!
I know that I am jumping ahead but can you see that I put vellum behind the leaves? Yep, I did. I truly wish that you could hold this in your hand as the vellum is stunning …I used tear -n-tape to adhere/anchor it to the color block card stock fun.
Adhering it this way it was not only easy (as we all know that the trick with vellum is the adhering part) so you do not see your adhesive. Having this wee bit of vellum really is stunning behind the leaves. It just gives a softness that does make a statement.
The fabulous sentiment, “just breathe” is also on vellum and heat set with the copper. I matted it with the vanilla (cause’ John said so) to make it show and pop! I carefully added some adhesive on the backside of some of the letters – again to hide the adhesive but the copper adhesive dots were the big help to hold the vellum.
For this card I used fun foam to raise the whole panel (the die will easily cut through the fun foam). Fun Foam is so inexpensive and you use every little piece to the end (just like stampin’ dimensionals)…I highly recommend you having a couple of sheets i your craft room…..you’ll be happy to have it on hand.
Let’s move to the other color combination. The colors I used are in the line up at the end of the post. You can clearly see the sky is the limit with color options…Have fun! ****(I noticed after I published this ,,,I have the wrong green listed – it should be Tranquil Tide…..NOT Emerald Envy)
In the second picture, you will see that I adhered this card panel to the card base making it flat. I couldn’t tell which one I liked better, do you have a preference…? They both work great but I think that I like the effect of the whole panel raised as it makes the vellum more noticeable!
Let’s chat about an envelope… I decided to do something total different and heat emboss the envelope. I was super happy with the end result and the envelope laid perfectly flat..to my surprise!
I was scratching my head as what to do for an envelope flap..so – why not, jazz up the front!
Now to another fun tip… As I am sure you have many embellishments that you simply do not use. As you can see in the picture below, I took VersaMark and applied to the embellishments and sprinkled the embossing powder over top and heat set them. Presto… a fun embellishment that works perfectly with this card.
There you go, a fun card that I hope that you can see….is doable and different. Please let me know what you think and which one is your favorite.
My thoughts and prayers are with all that are affected by the hurricane. Our Country sure has dealt with a bunch as it is so scary!
Enjoy the day and I hope this post has inspired you to take something that is very simple and add a fun twist to make a WOW! It was not only FUN but it was a great experience learning a different technique…
Like this:
Like Loading...
