The Write Stuff

Archive for May, 2014

Welcome to Pt. 2 of the May Challenge for Serendipity Stamps! This month the challenge is Flowers…stamped, die cut, designer paper, dried…whatever you have.  The sale at Serendipity Stamps this week is Buy 3, Get the 4th Free..  Good through 5/28.  And as always, we have a  have a gift certificate up for grabs to a random player.

For the design team, we have the added challenge of using a resist technique.

I chose a morphed version of embossing resist. Morphed because I also added the twist of bleach. Most of the time I’ll white emboss the image when I’m doing emboss resist, but it just didn’t work very well with this geranium image. So I black embossed it on water color paper. A note about the paper…this isn’t the good stuff…it’s water color paper from the kid’s art supply section. I’ve found when I’m embossing, it does a better job than the good stuff. It’s smoother and not as heavy but it still stands up to water very well. After embossing, I used a combination of techniques. I added color all over w/ a large paint brush, water & some dye reinkers. To make it a little more intense, I also sponged on some extra colors using two Kaleidacolor ink pads. I also splattered a bit here and there then wet it down a bit to soften the splatter. Now for the twist..I took a tiny acrylic paintbrush dipped in bleach and bleached some color back out inside the flowers & leaves. The embossed lines kept the bleach from traveling. If you try this, you must use an acrylic paintbrush…the bleach will totally eat up the natural hair bristles. To further define the image, I added a hint of shadow using a red Copic & a green Copic below the flowers & leaves.

After die cutting the panel, I added a slightly larger, fussy cut black layer. Black die cut elements were added to the corners on the white layer. After matting this on black, I attached it back on top of the original water color bg the image was cut from. The die cut Hello was also shadowed in black. 

Thanks so much for stopping by! Please be sure to visit all the team blogs to be entered to win! 

Best of 2014!
The Color Challenge on Splitcoast (CC479), is a wonderful combination! Love these colors and I think they worked out super for the all the lilies on my wedding cake.  And since my card is all about cake, I went for the dessert option of putting the greeting on the card front. Everyone loves wedding cake!

This card is pretty simple…only 1 layer on top of the card front. I stamped the Candle Corner and greeting directly on the top white panel and colored them. The cake was stamped on a separate piece along with several lilies. After coloring, I fussy cut the cake and a bunch of lilies and added them to the cake before attaching to my main panel. The finished card is 5.50 x 4.25 and these are the Copics I used.

Thanks so much for stopping by! If you haven’t yet, please check out the DRS Thursday Challenge. You still have a couple of days to enter and this week we want to see either a graduation card or a card using your school colors. DRS images are not required so head on over!

Supplies:

Congrats to Viv (Daizy-Mae), the newest Featured Stamper (FS380) on Splitcoast! She has such a wonderful, CAS (clean & simple) style. Makes me wish CAS came easy to me…but it doesn’t. But I did my best to trim this down.  I was totally inspired by THIS card.  I love the splashes of color, the dandelions and the sequins, so I kept those. I used a different greeting, my dandelions are die cuts since I don’t have an image like hers and I used an embossing folder to make my background. I also flipped it because my bigger white space was on the opposite side.

Don’t know if you’ve heard, but one of my DT mates and recent Dirty Dozen Alumni, Chris (aka Glowbug)  broke her ankle last week & she’s had a few complications. So I made this to send to her. I’m hoping this proverb will send her healing thoughts. 

I’ve really been enjoying all the embossing folder stamping I’ve been seeing, so I thought I’d try it. Instead of inking and misting, I tried using some sprays. Thought I’d skip a step and go straight for the spray stuff, lol. It worked wonderfully, IMHO. The sprays I used are very shimmery, but I just can’t capture it w/ the camera. I spritzed the more solid half of the ef, not to cover, just here & there, then pressed my white card stock inside & rubbed.  The sentiment was stamped, die cut dandelions & sequins added & done!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Supplies: