Springtime Flowers and EXCITING NEWS!!!

Hi friends!  I'm back with another watercolored Art Neko card today.  It got up to 85 degrees on Saturday, so it definitely feels like springtime around here.  

I pulled out the Spring in Paris (A407) stamp sheet and stamped the beautiful flowers randomly around the edges of my hot press watercolor paper with Versamark ink.  I covered that with white embossing powder and melted the powder with my heat tool.  I had just enough space in the middle for that beautiful sentiment (also from the Spring in Paris set), so I stamped that with Versamark ink and embossed it with white embossing powder.

Next, I pulled out a couple of blue colors of Daniel Smith watercolor paint.  I watered the paint down to make a nice watercolor wash and I painted that over my paper, carefully avoiding the flowers.  I let this dry for about an hour, and then I went back over with another wash of blue paint.  I set this aside to dry completely.  Then I pulled out my Zig Clean Color markers and watercolored the flowers and the stems.  Those bright pink flowers just pop against that blue background.

Once the paper was completely dry, I burnished the white embossing with a tissue to remove any leftover paint.  I also sponged the edges with a blue dye ink before adhering this piece to a white card base.

I had so much fun painting this card, I sent a sneak peek of this to Annette at Art Neko.  She liked this so much, she turned my card into an ATC Collage Sheet!!!!!!!!  How exciting is that????  You can see the Spring Summer Collage Sheet HERE in the Art Neko store.  I love how she edited my card to remove the sentiment and put those watercolor blue blocks all over.  It has such a modern, artsy vibe to it!

I have some of these collage sheets on their way to me in the mail, and I can't wait to play with these!  All you have to do is cut these apart and use them on your projects just like regular patterned paper.  If you are an ATC trader, you can use these as backgrounds on your ATCs.  You can stamp the centers with a sentiment, add more flowers, add birds or butterflies, add a die cut, whatever you want to do.  There are so many possibilities!!  Go order your Spring Summer Collage Sheet today along with the beautiful Spring in Paris stamp sheet and have fun making some gorgeous art.  :-)

Chocolate Tulip - two ways

Hi everyone!  This week's CAS417 challenge is "chocolate."  We can use the colors of chocolate, images of chocolate, or even make things like chocolate treat holders for this challenge.  I decided to try my hand at pencil coloring.

I stamped this gorgeous tulip from Art Neko with some kraft ink onto kraft paper and then colored it with Polychromos pencils.  I only used three colors of pencils: a dark brown, a medium brown, and then a pale gray/brown color.  These represent dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate.  :-)  I then glued the tulip piece onto a dark chocolate card base.  Three chocolate pearls were added to the lower left corner and I also added some thin strips of kraft cardstock to ground my image.

I added some ribbon to the top of the card as you can see in the picture below.  Then I couldn't decide if I liked it better with the ribbon or without, so I am posting both pictures for you to see.  Which one do you like better?

Valentine Hearts in Watercolor

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!!!!!  I'm sharing this Valentine card with all of you today.  This sweet double heart stamp and the sentiment are from Art Neko's A405 Valentine and Love Stamps sheet.  I watercolored them with Daniel Smith's Pyrrol Red paint.  Yup, I just used the one color of paint.  The variation in color is achieved by adding more or less water to the paint.  Once the piece was dry, I filled in the alternating stripes in the corners with a black Sharpie marker.  I also added some white buttons tied with baker's twine before I affixed the sentiment.

I cut out a piece of white cardstock and put it through an embossing folder that had some vertical stripes.  Since I angled my paper for the diagonal stripes, I had to run the paper through twice to emboss more stripes on the other half of the paper.  After I matted this with a piece of black cardstock, I glued this down to a red card base.  I cut out my watercolored hearts and adhered them to my white embossed panel.

I had fun experimenting with just one color of watercolor paint on this card.  Come on back next week for another fun experiment with watercoloring!  Have a wonderful Valentine's Day today!

Roses on Stone

I'm back with another Frantic Stamper card today.  Have you seen their February 2017 release of stamps and dies?  They are gorgeous, and I used their Wild Rose Corner dies (10113) on my card today.  

I started by sponging some soft gray ink through a Stone Wall stencil (MFT) directly onto my white card.  I kept the gray ink very light so that my roses and my sentiment would show up.  After determining where I wanted my roses, I moved them out of the way and stamped the sentiment (Concord and 9th's Hello Lovely stamp set) with black ink.

The Wild Rose Corner dies were cut from white cardstock, and then I painted them with Mission Gold watercolor paint.  I let the first layer dry completely and then I went back over it with more paint.  The glitter in the centers of the pink flowers is from some White Blizzard Glitter Drops (Nuvo).  I shaped the flowers with my fingers and then adhered them over the base flowers with some foam tape.  This gives a wonderful dimension and texture to the card.  The finishing touch on this CAS card was to wrap some Pink Sorbet baker's twine around the top.  I tied it off with a bow and trimmed the ends off.

Go check out the latest release at Frantic Stamper.  There are more flowers and a pleated dress and even a sewing machine die there!  Have fun!

Howdy Tag

Howdy, y'all!  I'm back with another card made with Frantic Stamper's February 2017 release dies.  On this card, I cut out the smallest flower from the Stitched Blooms set (10123) several times from kraft cardstock.  I glued them down onto a kraft layer for a monochromatic background.  The bright pink strip of patterned paper is from the Kneehighs paper pad (Basic Grey).

The bright pink color of the paper is a great match for the Infusions colors that I used on the tag.  Infusions are watercolor powders that you can do a lot of fun techniques with.  I sprinkled some Sunset Beach and Are You Cerise Infusions powders onto some white cardstock and then misted them with water.  I set it aside to dry completely for several hours before cutting it.

The tag that I used is the largest die from the new Nested Double Ended Tags (10102).  I threaded some brown twine through the holes on the sides and adhered it to my card.  The Howdy sentiment is an older die from Frantic Stamper, and it is perfect for this card.  I cut it out three times and glued them together for a nice thick sentiment on top of the Infusion-ed tag.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Dabbed Shimmers Happiness

Hi everyone!  I'm back with another Art Neko post today, and this one is so sparkly and shimmery.  I had used the Dabbed Shimmers technique for another project, and these strips are the leftovers from that project.  I couldn't bear to throw them away, so I put them all together and turned them into a fun background for this card.

The Dabbed Shimmers technique is from Technique Junkies, and it's a fun and easy technique.  Just mix some distress reinkers with iridescent medium and then dab it onto your cardstock with a sponge.  I used Shaded Lilac and Peacock Feathers distress inks for these shimmery strips.  No two pieces ever come out the same, so it's fun to see what you end up with.

I stamped the butterfly and the kanji circle (from Art Neko's A407 Spring in Paris sheet) with Shaded Lilac distress ink and then cut them out with scissors.  I affixed them to my card with foam tape so they have that extra dimension.

Have you seen the gorgeous stamps on the Spring in Paris sheet?  I swooooooon every time I look at them.  That Paris collage stamp is soooooo beautiful!  I can't wait to ink that one up!

You Are Beautiful

Hi everyone!  I'm excited to share this card with you today.  I'm a guest designer for Frantic Stamper, and this is my first post for them.  Frantic Stamper just released some new dies for February, and I'll be sharing the cards I created using those dies.

On this card, I used the fabulous Nested Double Ended Tags dies.  I cut the smaller tag out of vanilla cardstock and the larger tag out of black cardstock.  After I stamped the sentiment on the vanilla tag, I threaded the pink ribbon through the holes on each end of both the black and the vanilla tags and adhered them together.

The gorgeous floral paper is from a paper pad I found in the Frantic Stamper store - Random Collection from Crate Paper.  I used a teeny little piece of the black and white diagonal paper on the far left side of my card.  The sentiment is from the You Are Beautiful stamp set (Impression Obsession), which I also found in the Frantic Stamper store.  

Go check out their beautiful February release of dies and stamps at Frantic Stamper.  You will love them!!  Keep checking back with me here to see more of the artwork I created using their wonderful dies.