Conga Line!

 I am so excited to finally own one of the Anita Jeram stamp sets from the Colorado Craft Company.  She is the illustrator of the much loved children's book "Guess How Much I Love You", and her drawings are adorable.  This is "Conga Line" that I've painted up for my niece's birthday:

I used my Gansai Tambei watercolours, adding layers to build up the colours.  I'm still a bit new at this, but hope to paint this image many more times.  It made the perfect slimline card.

Happy Birthday, Allie!

Valentines for 2022

 Well here it is still January, and I've managed to get my valentines made already?  They're not over the top, we keep Valentine's Day fairly simple in our family, but it was fun to pull out supplies that I've had for a while, and make good use of them.  I also love making valentines that are a little non-traditional, especially when it comes to cards for the males in my life.  I pulled out the You're My Happy papers by Teresa Collins, and a few CTMH dies to put these together:

I used CTMH glitter paper on my cards - a coppery/brown colour for the masculine cards, and a nice glittery gold for my daughter.

Caffeinated Christmas

 There's a new challenge starting this month called Caffeinated Christmas, with (you guessed it!) coffee/tea/beverage themed cards with a Christmas theme.  Every month has a little something extra, and they're starting with snowflakes.  It's the last day to enter, so I rummaged through my file of Verve bits to find some mugs, and pulled out my Verve Holiday Treats stamp set to make the sentiments.  Some Echo Park papers and a little glitter cardstock and they came together pretty quickly:

And these are my first two Christmas cards made this year!  I hope to play along with the challenge often.

Balloon Animals

 I'm ashamed to say that I've had this cute Balloon Animal stamp set for years - and have only just pulled it out now!  But I've always loved the images, and they stamped beautifully in Distress Oxide inks - I used a couple of colours on each one to give them a little added dimension.  I stamped and cut out a whole bunch, and pulled out some (even older!) papers - then made up a couple of cards.  The sentiment and die are from Photoplay.

Foundations Teapots

  Time for another Watercolour Weekend on the Art Impressions blog!

Oh, how I love this stamp image!  So many possibilities... and it's a great stamp to 'chop up' and only colour up a few of the teapots.  This is 5468 - Foundations Teapots:

I began by putting the stamp into my Misti, as that's the best way to get an even, clear image with such a long stamp.  I coloured it up with my Tombow Brush Markers #969/565 and stamped it onto my Canson XL Watercolor paper.  After pulling out the colour with my damp #4 paintbrush, I used a palette of these colours to paint in my teapots: 076 Green Ochre, 312 Holly Green, 373 Sea Blue, 027 Dark Ochre and 228 Gray Green.  I added stripes and dots to a couple of them, but kept the rest fairly simple, concentrating the colour on the outer edges and leaving the middles lighter to indicate that they're all round.  For the fillers I've used 5475 - Flower Set 6, 5472 Christmas Wreath and 5476 Foliage Set 5 - adding in #679 Dark Plum to my colour palette.  I touched the foliage sparingly with my brush, and added some shadows in and around the pots with #565.

I created my frame by taping together the two largest dies in the 5463 - Slimline Dies Set, cutting out three of them and stacking them to create a raised frame.  The painted image was cut with the next smallest die, and attached to my card base with some 3D foam adhesive.  The raised frame and image make for some great added texture.  Be sure to check out the Ai blog on Saturday to see what Dot & Tricia have to share!

Charming Floral Border

 I was lucky enough to get a gift card to the Papercrafter's Workshop for my birthday... so I stocked up on some new Pinkfresh Studio products.  This is the Charming Floral Border stamp and stencils, along with 4 of their mini ink cube sets.  So quick and easy to colour up!  I am playing along with the January Challenge on the Pinkfresh Studio blog - my cards are for the March & August challenges which were flowers & stripes!

For this one, I fussy cut along one edge so that the front panel is shaped.

Happy Day

 It's my husband's birthday, so it is a happy day!  And given our last name, if I find a sentiment with "Day" in it, it has a bit of a punny feeling to it.  I used supplies from the Pigment Craft Co., cutting out the Fall Wreath die in several coordinating patterned papers, and stamping the Dashing Sentiments with some Distress Oxide ink before using the matching die to cut it out.

I intertwined the wreath pieces to mix up the patterns a bit, and popped up the sentiment with some 3D foam tape.  A few brown jewels finished it off.

New Year on the Ai blog

 We're starting a new year of Watercolour Weekend posts!  This is my project that will be on the Art Impressions blog this Saturday.

Even though it's January, I decided to kick off the new year with a big vase filled with tulips.

I coloured the kitten from 4873 - WC Cats Set in Tombow #969/565, stamped it on my Canson XL Watercolor paper, and covered it with a mask.  Using the same markers, I coloured up one of the vases from 5123 - WC Decorative Jar, and stamped it to appear just behind the cat.  The new 5475 - Flower Set 6 has two wonderful tulip stamps, so I used them both, coloured up in #N65 and stamped them repeatedly to fill up my vase.  Starting with a light wash layer, I painted my tulips in #755 and #946, then added layers to make some of the petals darker than others.  The stems and leaves were painted in #126 and #177, and I painted in a few extra leaves to fill in the background a little.  After pulling the colour out of the lines/edges, I painted #373 onto the vase, with a little #565 for shadowing.  I painted stripes of #N65 onto the kitten, darkened them with #565 and added a few tones of #946 to bring out the gold of the tulips.  I finished up by adding the suggestion of a shadow and a background with a wash of what was on my palette.  

I wanted a gingham background to match my vase, so I used a stencil set and some Distress Oxide ink to create my own.  My image was cut out with the 5064 Circle Double Stitched Dies.  Be sure to check out the Ai blog on Saturday to see what Dot & Tricia have to share, too!