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Poinsettia Frame

Posted on October 21, 2017 10:37 PM by Julie 2 Comments

It’s my turn to host the Featured Stamper Challenge (FS559) on Splitcoast. So a big Congrats to Jeanette, the newest Featured Stamper. I spent oodles of time in her big, beautiful gallery & finally narrowed it down to THIS card. I kept the Christmas poinsettias & most of the layout, but I used different images, different colors & left off a few of the layers.

I also have a little mini tutorial to go along with this card. I knew immediately I wanted to water color it, but I wanted it to be loose, not necessarily contained by the lines. I love stamping on top of free flowing watercolor backgrounds so that was my plan for this. Instead of pan or tube watercolors, I used Brushos. I lightly wet part of the watercolor paper w/ a spritzer, then sprinkled on the reds, pink & orange colors, then spritzed it again. In areas where the color seemed too concentrated, I took a wet paintbrush & blended it out. I let this dry a little, then repeated it w/ the greens, trying not to go over the red areas.

I used a plastic sheet placed up against the corner inside my Misti & stamped the image. This allowed me to position the paper to stamp the image where I wanted. Since it was big enough, I stamped it twice to use on two different cards.

I decided to deepen the color just a bit inside the leaves/petals of the poinsettia & the easiest way to do this is w/ watercolor pencils.

Instead of using the pencil directly on the image, I used a waterbrush to pick up color from the pencil tip, then painted it onto the image.

Since this poinsettia image in on the large size, I trimmed away most of the background around the left side of the image in order to have more of the citron green show. A dk green layer was added behind the poinsettia & also behind the citron layer. The greeting was stamped off the to left to help balance the composition and keep the eye flowing across the card. The blank citron areas give the eye a place to rest & draw the eye to the bright reds of the image. I could have added just a few sequins & I may go back & do that, but I’m pretty satisfied w/ composition as it is w/ the odd number of items (2 flowers + 1 greeting). Odd numbers are just more pleasing to the eye.

Here’s the inside:

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Supplies:

Stamps: Serendipity Stamps – Poinsettia Lg, Celebrate Each Day (inside: Magic of Christmas )

Paper: atercolor, dk green, citron felt (The Paper Cut)

Ink: Versafine onyx (Kaleidacolor fruitcake on inside)

Accessories: MFT diagonal stitched rectangles, Spellbinders A2 matting basics B, Brushos watercolor crystals, paintbrush, waterbrush, Misti, white gel pen, craft knife, spritzer, watercolor pencils

Poinsettia Lg 673K	Celebrate Each Day 153D	Celebrate the Magic 951E	Brushos Water Color Crystals
White Gelly Roll Pen	VersaFine Inkpads	MFT Diagonal Stitched Rectangle dies	Kaliedacolor ink pads
AC color card stock	Staples 110# White Card Stock	MISTI	Niji Waterbrush
Koh-i-noor Watercolor Pencils	Spellbinders A2 Matting Basics B S5-132

Serendipity October Blog Hop!

Posted on October 19, 2016 12:00 AM by Julie 22 Comments

Welcome to the October Blog Hop for Serendipity Stamps! If you arrived here from Jeanne’s blog, you’re in the right place..if not, you may want to head over there first.

The Prize – One $20 gift code will go to one random commenter from the blogs. So be sure to visit all the blogs because you don’t know which one the winner will be drawn from. You have through Sunday October 23 to leave comments on the blogs for a chance to win. Mary will announce a winner on October 24. The sale this week will be free shipping on US orders of $25 or more good Wed the 19th through Sunday the 23rd. There’s no coupon code required. Each month a different image is 50% off. This month- it’s the Pumpkin Border. On the third Wednesday of every month., we’ll be celebrating with a Blog Hop! For another chance to win, be sure to play along with our monthly challenge. You can get all the details on the challenge HERE.

This is also for the Splitcoast Featured Stamper, Bev! I chose THIS card to case, keeping the Christmas theme & layout, but I used different images, water colored my image & used a die cut greeting. For my card, I used this beautiful Poinsettia. I just love poinsettias & I can’t wait for the stores to get them in for Christmas. This image just said “water color” to me but instead of using my usual pan w/c, I used Brushos water color crystals. I sprinkled a few reds & greens on a blank palette then added water & painted w/ them as if they were pan w/c. Since this is a large image, I was pretty sure I was going to have to use my out of the box technique w/ the chosen die. I’ve shown this technique before, but a dear friend of mine, Kittie Caracciolo, who works w/ dies like you wouldn’t believe, mentioned that she just doesn’t “get” the out of the box. So here it is again 🙂 Once you understand the principal, it’s pretty easy. And it’s probably my most used & favorite technique. You can click the green link above for the original tutorial & you can also click any of these pictures to enlarge them.

The reason I didn’t fully cut out the little branches before die cutting is because they are so fragile & it’s easy to break them off. After die cutting, I’ll fully trim them out.

The most important thing to remember is that anything that falls out of the box, must be lifted above the die or else it will be cut off.

Here’s a look at the inside.

Please be sure to comment on all the DT blogs. It will be much appreciated & will also increase your chances of winning!

Julie Warner (you are here!)

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Supplies:

Stamps: Serendipity Stamps – Poinsettia Lg

Paper: Staples #110 white, water color, red pepper, dp (Paper Studio- Holly on Black, HOTP- Green Plaid, both retired)

Ink: Versafine onyx

Accessories: Serendipity Celebrate & Season’s Greetings dies, Spellbinders A2 matting basics A & B dies, Brushos water color crystals, MFT diagonal stitched rectangle dies

Poinsettia Lg 673K	Celebrate die 037ED	Season’s Greetings die 068FD	VersaFine Small Inkpads
MISTI	Brushos Water Color Crystals	Staples 110# White Card Stock	Water Color Paper
The Paper Cut Layering Swatches	MFT Diagonal Stitched Rectangle dies	Spellbinders A2 Matting Basics A S5-131	Spellbinders A2 Matting Basics B S5-132

This entry was posted in Christmas/Holiday/Winter Serendipity Stamps Spellbinders Nestabilities Splitcoast Challenges Splitcoaststampers Weekly Favorite Tutorials Watercolor and tagged blog hop Christmas MFT My Favorite Things out of the box poinsettias Serendipity Stamps Spellbinders Splitcoast Splitcoast Weekly Favorite tutorial water color

Pressed Maple Leaves

Posted on August 29, 2016 7:18 PM by Julie 7 Comments

I made this for today’s Technique Challenge (TLC601) hosted by my sweet friend, Karen, over on Splitcoast. The challenge was to take something from the yard and make an impression of it to use on your project.

So….what I learned from trying to run various leaves/flowers thru my Big Shot..
1. English Ivy leaves do not work. At all.
2. Geranium leaves really don’t work much better.
3. Sweet potato vine leaves work too well. They make a mess.
4. Geranium petals work, but they also make a mess & they do not want to release from the paper.
5. Japanese maple leaves work perfectly! But after the mess of #3 & #4, I put everything between paper towels & funny enough, the paper towel impressions look the best! (See comparison below.)

For my card, I used the 110# white c/s impression for the top layer & the larger one done on plain ol’ 24# copy paper. I even found a few Japanese maple leaves that had turned red! Since it has not been cool, I’ll assume it’s from heat stroke. Added a couple of dusty purple layers & a few die cut purple leaves (to cover an unfortunate embossing incident w/ the stitched die), & a greeting.

Here’s a look at the inside.

And here are the side by side comparisons. I’m definitely going to be using the paper towel versions in the future…love how they kept the reds of the leaves.

The leaves on the right are the ones I used for all of these samples above. Only the paper towel & the tissue paper pressings retained the red color. On all the others, the red turned to shades of purple.

Below: watercolor ppr, textured w/c ppr, 110# white c/s

On the first one, the geranium petals did NOT want to let loose of the paper (the original color is a bright fuchsia..see pic below).The second one, they came off a little better, but I had to really scrub. The maple leaves on plain white c/s came off easily, but the bright red leaves turned purple.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Supplies:

Stamps: Serendipity Stamps – All Those Golden, (inside- Autumn is Second Spring)

Paper: Staples #110 white, dusty purple

Ink: Versafine onyx (Memento elderberry- inside)

Accessories: Serendipity Leaves Reverse die, Spellbinders A2 matting basics A & B, stitched rectangles

All Those Golden 306D	Autumn is a Second Spring 1142E	Leaves Reverse Die SSDIE-078-H	Spellbinders A2 Matting Basics A S5-131	Spellbinders A2 Matting Basics B S5-132
VersaFine Inkpads	Memento Inks	Staples 110# White Card Stock	AC color card stock	Stitched Rectangles Die Set