Watercolour Wednesday Circle Sayings say

 A fun watercolour background for today's sample using ink pads, water spritzer, watercolour paper and acrylic blocks. Whilst perusing the internet I can across an image of some random shapes that were splodged onto the paper.... from that I came up with the idea of using my smallest acrylic blocks as stamps. As I started all I knew was that I wanted a background that I could put a bold focal point on. I wanted to use just sentiments from the Circle Sayings stamps.

I also wanted to use a piece of my favourite pattern paper,  well my favourite this week anyway 😉, as inspiration. The paper is from a pack called Stargazing.  It is an amazing pack full of beautiful bold bright patterns. ( which has 15% off till the end of this month 😀)

So I took my colour palette from the beautiful orage and pink planets sheet.  With this in mind I picked 2 shades of pink, a yellow, an orange and a lilack coloured inks to use.

I then took my watercolour paper and spritzed it with water. I then took my acrylic blocks stamped them onto the ink pad. Spritzed that with water too and stamped it onto the paper. I repeated it in a random pattern using both square and rectangular acrylic blocks . I then spritzed the finished piece to make sure the colours ran the way I wanted them too. 

Once dry I adhered the panel onto a navy blue card base. I stamped the sentiments onto another piece of navy cardstock in versamark and used white embossing powder to heat emboss them. Make sure you use an anti static bag when heat embossing on dark cardstock especially. 

I then used some gorgeous iridescent and silver sequins and adhered them randomly over the piece. In real life they catch the ligjt beautifully and twinkle like stars 🌟 

As the card is a shorter then normal slimline/ dl card I created a simple envelope using some of the gorgeous pattern paper.  With the planets on the inside the our side is a dark bluey black patter so I die cut a fun shape in white cardstock and adhered that to the front so it can be posted.

Join me here tomorrow for more inspiration using the Circle Sayings bundle of fun.

 

Watercolour Wednesday

 Poor Gill is still poorly 😢 and hasn't been able to create anything to share with us I'm afraid.  So please send her healing vibes.

So for today I thought I'd ask of you know about the exciting new online exclusive items from Stampin' Up! ? There is a fabulous selection of stamps, dies , punches and pattern paper and more! These are all in addition to the amazing kits collection. 

Here are a selection of the goodies available 😀 

If you'd like to explore these products you can do so in our shop click either

Gill's shop

 https://www.stampinup.uk?demoid=5001103

Or Cary's 

https://www.stampinup.uk?demoid=5001701

Watercolour Wednesday Sweet Citrus

 When I first saw the Sweet Citrus stamps at OnStage in Vienna back in November I staight away saw something other than a citrus fruit....

Can you see it? ..... Coconut's 🥥 !!!! Yup I have an active imagination 😅 but honestly that's what I saw with the 2 outine stamps center left!

Anyway with that in mind I wanted to create a bright tropical inspired card for today to show the coconuts off and this is what I came up with...

The background was created by adding ink to a very large acrylic block . I added drops of yellow, orange and pink reinker to seperate ateas of the block then added drops of water to make then loose.

Next I took a piece of watercolour paper and spritzed that well with water.  This is a wet on wet technique so make sure you're prepared with kitchen roll and a well covered work surface 😉 

Now the fun begins dab the wet side of the watercolour paper into the ink. You can move the paper around to create different colour areas.  I wanted the pink to be at one end then merge into the orange and yellow. 

I the used my kitchen roll to dab off the excess around thw edges and dried it with my heat tool. You can then go back in and add more ink if you wish. 

I was happy with mine . I  decided to heat emboss in white some of the little flowers from the stamps  over one corner. I love the effect this gives.

To create the coconuts I stamped the outline stamp in a soft brown colour called soft suede.  I took a fine tipped waterpainter and pained in the tuft at the bottom of the coconut shell.

Next I took the infill stamp and attatched it to my acrylic block the wrong way round. This means that the flat side was uppermost and the detailed side was attatched to the block.

I inked the stamp up in a light grey called smoky slate.  I then stamped it off onto scrap paper 3 times, huffing between each one to moisten. Then with the ink very pale I stamped inside the coconuts. I then took some white ink and using a blender pen added it to the edge of the grey to soften it and give the idea of the coconut flesh.

I fussy cut the coconuts out ehen I was happy with their appearance. 

Final touches of a few leaves, a few sparkles and a very punny sentiment. Doesn't the sentiment make you start singing " I've got a loverly bunch of coconuts...." it sure does for me 🤣🤣🤣

Watercolour Wednesday Beautifully Happy

 Today I'm sharing a project that I created that involves a "messy" background.  Now if you've been here before you'll know that I like to get messy when crafting 🤣 After all as the saying goes... Creativity is messy and I'm  very creative!! So I made this messy background to show case the outline stamp from the Beautifully Happy stamp set. 

How did I get messy ? Well I started out with fluid 100 watercolour paper, a water spritzer filled with water, an acrylic block and 4 different coloured reinkers. Oh and don't forget some kitchen roll! It helps keep the mess under some level of controll 😉

I start by choosing my colours. I love shades of punk and damson so went with those. I popped a drop of each reinker onto the acrylic block and added a drop or 2 of water onto each. 

I then spritzed the watercolour paper and using a waterpainer I added the wet ink to the wet paper. I use my kitchen roll to dab the areas that became waterlogged and to prevent the stronger colour taking over completely. I contimued to add and dry till I was happy. 

I then flicked water and spritzed water over the piece dabbing it straight away.  This gave the piece some speckles which I find appealing. 

Now you have to wait untill the piece if completely dry. I would also recomend using a Stamparatus or other stamp positioning tool to stamp your image. This allows you to stamp more than once onto the textured paper. This means you get a clearer image. 

I then took a white gel pen and added highlights to the image. I was a little nervous about this nut I'm so glad I went for it. The finished result is lovely 😍 

 

What do you think? Do the white highlights give the finished card a little something extra?

Now I'm  not saying it's perfect but I do think a  white gel pen makes a good addition to my tool kit!