Cherry Blossom Woman in Oil Pastels

Hi everyone! I'm back to share this card I made using this sweet Asian woman under a cherry blossom tree from Art Neko. This image is watercolored with water soluble oil pastels. That sounds like a strange contradiction, doesn't it?

This woman under the cherry blossom tree collage is from the A411 Asian Influence Sumi-e Paintings stamp sheet at Art Neko. I stamped this with Tuxedo Black Memento ink onto white cardstock and let it dry completely. Then I scribbled a little bit of color from the oil pastels onto some of the larger areas and used a wet paintbrush to move the color around. For the smaller areas like the little ball, I touched the wet paintbrush to the end of the oil pastel stick and picked up some color from there. This was a fun experiment to see what it was like to watercolor with oil pastels.

The background is something I made while I was at a retreat last month. I was introduced to oil pastels while making this, and I fell in love. We dabbed some white gesso through a stencil onto some watercolor paper and let it dry. Then we scribbled the oil pastels all over the piece and used baby wipes to blend the colors together. Isn't that a fabulous background? Now you see why I fell in love!

I hope you've enjoyed my oil pastels experiment today. Have a wonderful week!

CAS434 Gold Birthday Balloons

Howdy!  Did you enjoy your weekend!  I ended up making more chocolate zucchini bread and our first batch of salsa with the first tomatoes from the garden.  Mmmmm..........

There is a new CAS434 challenge up over on SCS today.  Kia wants us to use balloons and have some sparkle on our clean and simple cards.  I cut some balloons out of gold glitter paper and adhered them to a Dapper Denim card base.  I drew the strings with a white gel pen and then added the die cut sentiment.

All these dies are from Frantic Stamper.  I used the Big Balloons and the Brush Script Happy Birthday sets.  I love how they are the perfect size for using on A2 cards.  :-)

I hope you have a wonderful week!  I will have an Art Neko card to share with you in a couple of days, so come on back and visit with me again.

Chocolate Flower Squares

Hi everyone!  I'm back after a bit of a hiatus from stamping.  My puppy tore her ACL and had to have surgery, so I spent a couple weeks helping her get around during her recovery.  Then I was packing up stuff and I went to a stamping retreat which was a lot of fun.  Here is the aftermath......  LOL

Yes, my studio looks like this right now as I'm typing up this post.  I have a lot of unpacking to do, but I was able to whip up a sweet little chocolate flower card to share with you today.  This card is a cute little 3x3 notecard, and you can put together a set of these in less than 30 minutes.

I stamped the Peonies Squared from Art Neko's A281 sheet (Bold Nature Scenes) with some chocolate ink onto some vanilla cardstock.  I trimmed the stamped image out and glued it down onto a chocolate card.

It really helps to have a well-inked inkpad when inking up a solid stamp like this.  If you find that your images are coming out blotchy, try reinking your inkpad first.  You can also make sure you clean your stamp really well - sometimes there is a little residue left on the stamps from the manufacturing process.  Using a stamp positioning tool such as a MISTI is a big help when you need to re-stamp your image.

I'm going to get back to unpacking, so hopefully everything will be put away before my next Art Neko post.  Hee hee hee!  Have a great week!

Shabby Blue Flower

Good morning, everyone!  I have some exciting news today!  I have joined the design team for Victorine Originals.  I've been playing with this beautiful flower stamp called Bush Morning Glory, and I loved how this looked in blue.  I decided to go for a monochromatic card for my first VO post today.  

I stamped this gorgeous flower with Stormy Sky distress ink onto some white cardstock.  Then I used a wet paint brush and "colored in" in the flower.  I added a little extra ink to the star-like center so it would pop out.  I love the shabby chic feel of this soft blue flower.  To enhance the shabby theme, I sponged some brown ink on the edges and then distressed them with a distress tool.  I did the same thing with the other white layer in the background before tying some blue seam binding around the flower.

Check out the VO blog every day to see gorgeous artwork from my fellow design team members.  Don't forget, we also have a fun challenge for you to play along and share your own artwork with us.  The current challenge (#3) is Fathers, so show us your masculine cards and projects.