Mason Jar Bouquet

These cards were inspired by Lindsay Weirich, 
the Frugal Crafter, and her Happy Heart Bouquet Card Tutorial.

I used 2 strips of printed papers from my stash for the background.
Die cut the oval from scraps of watercolor paper.
After stamping the vase, leaves and flowers
I used a water brush to pull color from the stamped vase
to add more blue color as shown.

The background for this card was made with embossing folder stamping technique-with pearlized acrylic paint from my stash. I like these two tutorials:
Heidi Wegman's Embossing Folder Stamping
and
Audrie Magno-Gordon's Embossing Folder Stamping

In my rush to get this card finished for a belated birthday,
 I forgot to add blue color underneath the mason jar.

Materials Used: Inks- distress broken china, worn lipstick, victorian velvet, wild honey, hickory smoke, abandoned coral, 
Stampin' Up! certainly celery, wild wasabi

Stamps- Stampin' Up!, Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous, Judith and Heather, Hero Arts

Park Lane Rose Repeat embossing folder
Spellbinders Nestabilities Oval die
Water brush
Eyelash yarn from my stash

Thanks for visiting. Hoping you spend time with your favorite person today!

Valentines 2019

I had fun using embossing folder technique to make these backgrounds with acrylic paint. Used my new embossing folder called Whimsical, made by Park Lane from JoAnn's. It was on sale for $2.

If you have followed my blog, you will know that I really like these two tutorials for embossing folder stamping:

Heidi Wegman's Embossing Folder Stamping
and
Audrie Magno-Gordon's Embossing Folder Stamping

I used Adirondack Acrylic paint-Raspberry, applying it directly onto the "logo" or raised side of the embossing folder. Spritzed it with water, added paper, closed the embossing folder and pressed it down with a brayer. You can also just press with your hands.  Remove paper and set aside to air dry. Used Georgia Pacific 100 pound white card stock, but you can use watercolor paper if you wish.

When dry, I sponged the edges with distress picked raspberry ink.

Stamps used: Michael Strong and Hero Arts.

Below are some close ups and a few additional cards:

Michael Strong mini hearts were fussy cut and adhered with dimensional foam.

Sponged with distress inks: cracked pistachio, squeezed lemonade, picked raspberry.

On this background I added the paint to the "wrong" side of the embossing folder-NOT the side with the logo or raised side. It created a different look, so I added more sponging afterward. For the edges I sponged in distress hickory smoke ink.

Heat embossed Michael Strong's mini hearts on this card.

It's hard to see, but I used a strip of tulle on the side and tied it with a bow.

A loop of wide grosgrain ribbon for a bow, adhered with a glue dot.

Hope you have a very Happy Valentine's Day!

It's always been a special day for remembering...

my parents were married on Valentine's day 1953.

Wishing you heartfelt happiness today and every day!

Painting a Lady Face in my Art Journal

A great big thanks to Amy Joy Johnson aka HapaChicCreative for her

Jane Davenport Portrait Paints - Demo & Unboxing YouTube tutorial.

Amy gives wonderful directions for using Jane Davenport's portrait paints and face stencil.

I'm so happy I gave this a try...and glad to have used this paint kit on the actual day I bought it!

So many times my supplies go into my stash and sit there unused!

This is my second "entry" in my art journal, a Canson 5.5 x 8.5 inch with 138 lb. paper.

I applied gesso ahead of time. I used a stabilio pencil to "draw" in the stencil lines, 

whereas Amy used a Derwent Inktense pencil.

Here you can see my work area with my iPad nearby

so I could watch Amy's YouTube over and over.

 The aqua brush was included with Jane's paint and stencil kit.

Also used brushes from my stash.

Here are the paints I used. I forgot to include a photo of Dina's Ruby red paint.

This paint tray pallette worked well. For the black outline/definition I put a dab of black paint on the top of this pallette and thinned it with a little water. Used it to accent the lines on the face, including around the eyes, the eyelashes, nose, mouth and eyebrows. I don't have Jane's mermaid  brush markers for the hair so I used Dina's Lapis blue mixed with some Liquitex Basics titanium white and Dina's Ruby red for the strips on the shirt. Don't have the white PITT pen to add highlights. Next time will try to use white acrylic paint for that.

This was very fun and relaxing to try make this face with Jane Davenport's stencil.

Thanks for visiting!

Lady Face Painted and Collage Cards

Inspired by Dina Wakley and Jane Davenport, I've been working with Dina Wakley's heavy body acrylic paint, stamps, stencils and finding some relaxation and stress relief! Instead of working inside my art journal, I worked on separate pieces of watercolor papers from my stash.

Dina Wakley makes this look so easy in her YouTube videos. It was a bit of a struggle for me! I guess I thought I could just spread some paint on paper and it would look great...not!
I think it's better with layering the paint...and adding stencils and stamps.

I drew a few faces with a PITT India Ink marker pen. On some of these I added watercolor pencil to color to the hair and eyes, but the PITT marker bled, so I wasn't sure that was the way to go. My pieces are small-they fit on a 4.25 x 5.5 inch card (or smaller). 

The "mood du jour" is part of a Dawn Houser/Inkadinkado stamp. The leaf is from What I love by Stampin' UP!

I really like how the Golden Soft Gel (Matte) medium worked to adhere the book page strips. They dried to a nice matte finish. In the past I had used a semi-gloss medium, which has a shine to it. The matte finish makes it look so much better! 

The "think" is part of a Dina Wakley Media 6 by 9 inch Stencil called Hey You. Originally I stenciled the "don't overthink", but I worked over the "don't over" and just left "think". Decided to add "don't" and "just create" with my PITT India ink pen and  then Gelly Roll Classic white pen. The lady is from Hampton Arts-Time Flies. I used black Versafine ink. The leaves, from SU, same as above, were stamped with Dina's "night" paint, which is a very dark blue.

The face here is stamped with distress vintage photo using Rubber Stampede's She knows #3652C. For the white circles I used the plastic cover from a paint dabber. Used a piece of sequin waste to stencil the little circles on the right using Dina's white paint.

This face is stamped with distress walnut stain ink using Dawn Houser/Inkadinkado Camp Rouge French lady face stamp #8340-N. I mixed Dina's ruby and lemon paints to create the orange color. The white circles on the bottom left were made with the sequin waste stencil. The other white "circles" were added by hand with the paintbrush.

Thanks for visiting! You are welcome to share any tips or ideas on this topic!

December 30 Stampfest with Lynette

Lynette and I decided to start some art journal pages with my new Dina Wakley Heavy Body Acrylic Paints. I grabbed my previously gesso-ed papers and my new journal. It's a Canson 5.5 x 8.5 inch size with 138 lb paper. I don't know the details on the loose papers which were from my stash.

Before getting started we watched some YouTubes:

Dina Wakley's Dina Wakley Talks About Art and Art Journaling

and

Jenn Engle's Art Journal Page: New Dina Wakley Paints

Then we had a ball playing with paint, stencils, stabilio pencil, the fine tip applicator to write with Dina's paints

Made by Lynette

Made by Lynette

This and the next photo show my attempts. You can always click on an image to enlarge.

It has been very fun and relaxing to try to draw lady faces like Dina Wakley and Jane Davenport.

Inspired by page 77 of Jane's book, Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces: A Mixed-Media Portrait Workshop, I cut out an oval and tried to draw a face with my India Ink Pitt 0.1mm extra fine pen. I used Golden gel medium-Soft Gel (Semi-Gloss) to adhere it to the page and also added the gel over the oval. It dried quickly and ended up with a nice semi-gloss finish that was not too shiny. On the left panel, I drew the face with a stabilio pencil. Noticed that the pencil bled when I tried to add some watered down Lapiz blue paint. So I added some white from a white out pen to "fix" the eye. I'm not sure I liked how the stabilio pencil got bled, so will have to experiment with it. I really like Dina's attitude...about just making art and not worrying! Just love her words, "Oops, oh well". She gives everyone permission to have fun with art!

Here is a photo of Lynette and me--

a nice remembrance our our fun exercise in art journaling with paints!

Materials:

Dina Wakley Heavy Body Acrylic Paint

Fine Tip Applicator for writing words in black paint

Stabilio pencil

Faber-Castell India Ink pen

Dina Wakley Word Stencil-"Hey You"

Sequin waste stencil

Flat paint brushes

Toothbrush

Coloring and Painting Scribbly Birds

Here are some Scribbly Bird cards inspired by Anneke De Clerck's bird card blog post 

and Dina Wakley's Media Painted Tag YouTube. 

 

 I embellished wrinkle free distress backgrounds from my stash:

sponged mermaid lagoon ink over a Tim Holtz' Honeycomb stencil,

stamped Tim's Bitty Grunge stamp with stormy sky.

I made my own 3 circle stencil with cardstock and a  5/8 inch punch

applying pearlescent white Adirondak acrylic paint through the circles with a paintbrush.

 

For the open circles, I used Dina's technique-

dab some acrylic paint on the bottom of a paint bottle and apply it to your piece. 

I also found the open side of one of the screw tops of the dabbers worked even better.

It's a pity my Adirondak paint dabbers are drying out before I can use them up.

 

For the Scribbly bird above, I used card stock, 

stamped it with a BoBunny text stamp in pumice stone.

Then on top of that, I stamped Dina's bird on top, using Versafine black onyx ink. 

When dry I used colored pencils to add color.

 Here are some photos of my work along the way.

 I tried Dina's method of dry painting the Scribbly birds, 

which have been stamped on old book paper.

I used red colored pencil for the tiny heart. She used paint. 

Afterward I outlined the heart with a Pitt Artist Pen 0.1 mm-Black India Ink.

Below are the 3 painted Scribbly birds.

 I added the sentiment from the set on some of my cards

cutting out the lines and attaching with Golden Soft Gel (Semi-Gloss) gel medium.

I used various fibers from by stash.

 

 Pulled out some strands of burlap, making circles to resemble a nest.

Thanks for visiting!

Altered Playing Cards

Inspired by Hetty's Altered Playing Cards, here are my altered playing cards.

I painted the cards with gesso as suggested by Claudine of Claudine's Art Corner.
Claudine introduced an Altered Playing Card Challenge
and has a Facebook Group for it.

When my gesso was dry, I painted with
Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabbers, Aqua and Raspberry. 

(If your dabber paint has become a clump, you can add water to thin, then use a paintbrush.)

Stamped Michael Strong Leaves with broken china and fussy cut them.

Cut words from velum and glued to leaves.

Used Lifestyle Crafts Goosebumps LACE embossing folder, 

cut a section then distressed with broken china.

Cut leaves flowers from printed paper scraps, gluing them as shown.

Stamped edges with a Club Scrap Textiles and Notions unmounted stamp 

using Stampin' Up! Lovely Lilac ink.

Color pencils used on Michael Strong Star stamp.

Added Clear Star Gelly roll pen for some glitz, which doesn't show in the image.

Laughter sentiment, unknown origin.

Happy Gals from ERA graphics.