Happy Easter card

Hello everyone. I have been asked to join the Polka Dot Orchard design team. I am so excited to bring you projects using the wonderful digital stamps you can find there.

I used a couple of different sets for today's card.

Start by printing the large egg background from Woodland Cuties Easter Moose on Canson Bristol Smooth 100lb paper. This was printed out in about 5"x7" size. Watercolor with Zig Clean Color markers and trim to an A2 size card panel. Print the Happy Easter sentiment from the same set. Once it is trimmed down, doodle a border around it if you would like.

Cut a frame with any die you have. This one is Scallop Stitched Rectangle frame from Gina Marie Designs. Layer this with acetate and foam tape. Assemble the frame and egg background by pulling the backing off the bottom and two sides of the foam tape, leaving the backing on the top. Fill with sequins and then use a piercing tool or tweezers to loosen the backing off the top layer of foam and pull it out. I find this is much easier to line up all the layers and fill with the shaker material. 

Print the bunny from Spring has Sprung and color with Copics. Fussy cut him out and layer him and the sentiment on top of the acetate and frame layer of the shaker. 

Angie Blom Digital Designs announcement & cards

Hello everyone. I have some exciting news to share. I have been blessed with being asked to join the design team for Angie Blom Digital Designs. I have been a huge fan of Angie's art and rubber stamps sold through Unity Stamp Co. I am super excited that I can now get even more images from her digital shop. 

This otter set is her newest release and is on sale for a limited time. Go check it out fast.  One of the best things about Angie's digital sets is that along with the images, you get a printable 8 1/2 x 11 sheet with 4 cards already arranged for you. All you have to do is click and print. This first card uses one of those pre-arranged images.

Isn't this otter adorable?  I printed out the sheet of cards and just cut them apart. I colored this cutie up using my Copics. I water colored the blue around him. I discovered you can water color on Copic friendly paper if you use as little water as possible and don't go over an area too much. 

 This card required a little more work.  I used Photoshop Elements to create it. I put my main otter in the center and made it a bit larger than the surrounding ones. The I used both the otter images and arranged them around this main one. I turned and rotated them as I went. I colored the main one with some E25, 27 & 29. and the rest were colored with W00, and W02. They were outlined with B0000. 

Here's a look at them amazing team I get to work with at Angie Blom Digital Designs. Go spend a moment poking around her site. If you would like lots of inspiration or have questions about using digital images, there is a great Facebook group you can join. Click HERE to check it out.

Hello Gnomie card

Hello. Today I was playing around with a fun digital image from SheepSki Designs.

I had a blast coloring it and have a few more printed out to try some different coloring techniques.

I printed this great image using a laser printer on my Neenah 80lb card stock. I have to admit I didn't keep track of the colors I used. Scroll down and you will see why. I picked to red combos, two blue and two green combos for the hats. I tried to give the beards some texture. I will be coloring this image again just to try some other techniques.

Aren't these guys just the cutest?

I used a zig zag cover die in black and mounted it on black card stock. The gnome image is also matted in black. It looks much better in person. The sentiment is from a Unity Stamp co set I own.

It looks like my marker case exploded all over my desk. Yes, I really used this many markers to color this image. The sad thing is I feel like it really needed some better techniques. Hopefully practice will make perfect.

Supplies used:

Garden Party-gnome selfie

Things Take Time-sentiment

Cuddlebug Werewolf Card

I love the line of Cuddlebug stamps drawn by Tierra Jackson. Most of them are stamp kits sold by Unity Stamp Co. A few are digital images you can purchase straight from her. This werewolf is one of the digital images. Isn't he just the cutest?!

I printed him out with a laser printer and colored him with Prismacolor pencils and Gamsol.

I matted him with some yellow spider web paper that I used Distress Oxide Soot to distress the edges. The sentiment comes from a Cuddlebug stamp set.

Supplies used:

Werewolf-digital image

Bride of Frank-sentiment

Be sure to go to Unity Stamp Co and search Cuddlebug to see the entire adorable collection of stamps in this line.

Matching Boots and Hat Halloween card

Hello everyone. I am super excited to share this card. As soon as I saw this Halloween set show up on Polka Dot Orchard digital stamps, I knew I had to buy it.

I spent an hour learning how to use Photoshop Elements just so I could combine the boots and hat exactly how I wanted. Bonus that I learned enough to draw in the basic floor lines also.

Are these not the cutest witch boots you have ever seen? I know my coloring didn't do them justice so I will be trying again. I can see them in all the Halloween colors.

I started in Photoshop Elements by layering the boots and hat and adding the sentiment. I decided it looked like they had been tossed down by a tired witch so I used the draw tool to draw in lines for the baseboard and flooring. I then searched the internet for a free spider web graphic in a .png file and added that to the wall.  I used this tutorial to color the flooring. Copic Wood Texture Tutorial

I wanted the walls to have and aged, dirty look so I used this image from the internet for my inspiration. I colored them with Copic markers but it might have been easier to use some Distress inks and blending.

Copics used:

Floor: E13, E35, E37, E59

Baseboard: E41, E71, E44

Trim on boots & hat: V20, V22, V25 and gold metallic Prismacolor pencil

Main color of boots & hat: C4, C5, C6, C7

Wall: G20, YG61, YG63 and E42. Lots of layering.

Digital stamp set used:

Best Witches-boots, hat and sentiment

Free spider web from the internet.

Hello Sunshine card

A quick card for today. I used a beautiful digital stamp from Graciellie Designs.  I have been seeing this technique where you place the sentiment in the middle of an image and wanted to give it a try. 

I used Microsoft Word and placed the sunflower image in a text box and sized it how I wanted. I then placed the sentiment in a text box and sized and placed it over the sunflower where I wanted it. I left the text box background white so that it wouldn't let the sunflower show through in that area. I printed it out on a laser printer and used a ruler and a Copic friendly pen to draw lines above and below the sentiment along the edge of the image.

Copics used:

Sunflower petals-E17, YR24, YR27, Y15, Y19, BV20

Center-E34, E29, E49, E59, YG13, G20, Y02

Don't let he number of colors intimidate you. Most are used very sparingly. I started with the darkest color on the petals and worked my way out. I colored several petals at the same time.  I put down the three darkest colors and then used the Y19 to blend them out, leaving a little bit of white space to fill in with the Y15.

The center was done by dotting all the colors. I started with the darkest color and dotted along the outside edges of the center. Leave a lot of white space for the first layer. Then add each color starting slightly into  the previous colors area and dotting out a little further. You then go back following your previous pattern and dot another layer to fill in the white spaces. 

Once I had the image colored, I die cut the panel and cut a loose mask to cover the flower. I splatted black water color over the panel. I am splatter challenged. I always seem to get one random clump of splatters no matter what I do. 

Supplies used:

Summer Sunflowers-digital stamp

Shimmer & Shine-if you prefer red rubber stamps, these are the same images. They will be slightly smaller than the flower on my card.

Double Stitched In & Out-rectangle die

Embrace the Moment-digital stamp

Today I dabbled in the world of digital stamps. There are so many amazing companies out there and digital stamps take up a lot less room. I simple used Microsoft Word to import and resize my image. I definitely will need some practice with that. I didn't get any thing the size I might have really wanted.

I printed the camera and sentiment out on Neenah 80lb card stock with a laser printer. I colored the camera up with Copics and fussy cut it out. I trimmed down the sentiment and gave it banner ends. 

I couldn't find any paper I liked so I made my own. I used 2 Copic markers and varied the strip size my using the different tips and making more than one line with a color. I used one of the blue Copics to color around the edge on an A2 size piece of card stock to make a matching mat. I used the same blue to make a mat for the sentiment by coloring a strip of white card stock all over.

Copics used:

Stripes-Y13, Y15

Camera body-B21, B23, B24

Lens, flash etc-C, C5, C6, C7

Heart-Y13

Supplies used:

Embrace the Moment-digital stamp set 

This set also can be purchased in red rubber from Unity Stamp Co

Take Another Shot-red rubber

White pearl cotton

White enamel dots

thin foam tape from the Dollar Tree