Tutorial: Watercolour Ink Technique

The Studio Calico Mixed Media Class started off today with a bang! 4 tutorials from some awesome scrappy ladies including Celine Navarro, Anna-Maria Wolniak, Loredana Bucaria... (and the fourth person was me! Hee hee!!)

Class registration is going to remain open for another month, so it's still not too late to sign up and get in on the action. Because whilst I can't really show you what I contributed to the classroom, I can hint at some of the goodness you'll find in the class by sharing with you a different tutorial that I've put together using some different mixed media techniques ;-) But trust me, this is just the tip of the ice-berg!

In brief, I had two ideas behind what I wanted to accomplish with this card. One was to put my Silhouette Sketch Pens to good use. I've had these for years now and only used them a handful of times. Shame on me! With the myriad of fabulous digital files Studio Calico release each month I knew I could find some appropriate ones for using with the Sketch Pens. I've chosen the Bluegrass Farm Background Cutting File by Paige Evans for this tutorial.

And the second idea was to try some different techniques with the new Color Theory Ink Pads. Because these are a water-soluble ink I knew it would be possible to create some fun watercolour effects with them in the background of my card, whilst using them in the traditional sense to stamp in the foreground.

So here's the video of my creative journey through these techniques and how I put my card together. Occasionally it's a journey of discovery.... (watch me giggle when I find out that Sketch Pens are water-soluble too!) but overall it was just plain fun ;-)

 


Here's the Supplies I Used:

Bessie Add On Kit Clover Add On Kit Pip Add On Kit Watercolour Paper Pack Bluegrass Farm Background Cutting File by Paige Evans Bluegrass Farm Printable Journal Cards by IACB Bluegrass Farm Printables Labels Silhouette Cameo Sketch Pens Starter Pack Sketch Pens Metallic Pack Glossy Accents Large Acrylic Block Color Theory Ink: Blush Crush Color Theory Ink: Coral Bay Color Theory Ink: Orange County Color Theory Ink: Sunny Day

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Polly! Scrap Kits Blog Hop

Welcome to the Polly! Scrap Kits blog hop. Today we're celebrating the fabulous exclusive stamps that Polly stocks. You can get your hands on a new stamp every month from the kits, or in sets which are sold separately.

There are some fabulous Guests along with the Polly Design Team showcasing some of the stamps today. You should have made it here from the talented Kayla's blog. But if you're lost, or you stumbled here by chance then I suggest you start at the Polly blog and work your way through from there. Leave a comment on any of the blogs in the hop to go in the running to win your choice of the 3 stamp sets in the Polly store!

For my project I took the stamp that came exclusively in the November kit and used it on this card. The stamp includes the sentiment "Proud as a Peacock" which I've used to create a banner out of, and also a small peacock feather. These are a hot trend right now and I had lots of thoughts running through my mind on how I could use it.

But ultimately I wanted to do something a little different with the peacock feather part of the stamp so I turned it into a digital cutting file and used it to cut this delicate feather from some glitter card!  That way I could turn it into a large feature point and really highlight it, rather than risking it getting lost in the business of the other embellishments. 

In case you're wondering why I've gone a little nuts mixing my peacock sentiments with teacher appreciation ones... it's because my daughter's teacher is called Miss Peacock!! This card will be making it's way to her at the end of the year. I hope she likes it :-)

The next stop on the Blog Hop is the fabulous Kate. You'll just love what she's created to share with you. And don't forget to leave a comment here for your chance to win your choice of a Polly stamp set of your own! The giveaway will close on Monday 16th December.

Good luck!

The Story of the 10th Anniversary Album

At the very last minute I've decided I might try and attempt another December Daily this year. Not too sure how successful I'll be. Maybe calling it a Documenting December album will be more accurate. Possibly.

This is not it of course...

When I say I decided at the last minute to attempt a DD I mean here I am on Dec 1st and I've managed to finish the front cover but not even photograph it, and I certainly haven't done anything inside it! So instead I thought I'd share a different mini-album I completed earlier in the year that I never blogged (because it was published before I ever had a chance to get it up here!)

Back in January The Man and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. We had originally planned a trip to Japan, just the 2 of us. But upon further contemplation of the fact I had the biggest exams of my life pending in February, and then again in October we thought it wiser to hold off. He still took me on a romantic weekend away though, and this album tells the story of that.

Not your ordinary album with pages, I took a little twist with this one. The album base is all one piece of folded card with a series of pockets into which I've placed tags and cards to pull out individually. That allowed me to tuck in all the photos (with journaling on the back) as well as little bits of ephemera we collected on the trip. And when it started to get a bit bulky I tied a ribbon all around it to make sure it stays together securely.

All the patterned papers are from the Amy Tangerine Sketchbook collection (yep - still digging this!) I needed to keep all the embellishments fairly flat so I've stuck with plenty of Silhouette cuts and stickers.

Hopefully I'll be back soon blogging my Documenting December album.
Or at least my front cover ;-)

Welcome to the festive season!!

The Story of Name Calling

I can honestly tell you I've been having such a fun time creating with the Hello Again collection from Carta Bella that's currently available in the Paper Stories store. I'm not sure that I had used Carta Bella before the lovely Georgia sent me this kit, and maybe you're in the same boat? Let me tell you the quality of these papers is fabulous! Do you remember the old Crate Paper, or the older My Mind's Eye papers that were thick and soft and velvety? That's what these are like.

For this first layout I've limited myself to only using the yellow, pink and black papers. When I'm faced with an entire collection I find it a little daunting to know where to start. For example, there's way too many fun tags and stickers to choose from! But if I make up a colour scheme to follow it helps me make choices about which ones to use.

I started my layout by cutting out a bunch of hearts into my background paper with my Silhouette. I backed it with a contrasting colour and made sure to stick some foam tape in between the layers to give it some depth and dimension. That's a little technique I've been playing around with lately and I'm really loving the results. I've made another page using this style but it's been picked up for publication by Scrapbook Trends (yep - shameless name dropping here!)

And of course, the cut-out hearts don't go to waste because I've used some here, and the rest ended up on my next layout! I've just doodled around them a bit with black and white pens.

Because most of the decoration on this page was done with the hearts I didn't need a lot more embellishments, but I've layered up some of the Element Stickers plus the Label and Flair from Ormolu which match perfectly. The title stickers also worked well as they continued on with the black & white theme. You can find these JBS stickers in the shop too (on sale!!)

This layout is all about the day my youngest finally called her sister by her proper name. You know how young kids tend to turn long difficult names into funny little abbreviations? Well it's taken my almost-4-year-old that long to be able to call her sister 'Bethany'. Mostly she calls her 'Bebesh'. It's partly our fault too of course, as we rarely call her Bethany either. She's got about a million little nicknames that we call her instead. It's just a family moment in our everyday lives that seems worth documenting :-)

The Story of Attempt #4

This is the last layout I've got to share in my series of 'failed' attempts whilst working on my application for Masters. This one was for the challenge of making an interesting and unique background. You can see 3 other attempts at this challenge here, here and here!

Whilst it never made the final cut for my Masters entry, I don't actually consider it a failed layout. I still like how it turned out, albeit quite different from my original idea. It involved a lot of fiddling and experimenting which is part of the fun and I loved playing with new techniques along the way.

I used some of my most favourite supplies - including reigniting my fondness of these JBS rubon butterflies. I've had this one in my stash for so long that unfortunately it got a little stuck on the packaging, but I'm never one to shy away from imperfections (!) so on it went anyway. I think it makes quite a bold statement on this page about my girls meeting their new baby cousin for the first time.

And sticking with the kraft and red colour scheme I chose these JBS feathers as my only other real embellishments. Given the nature of the challenge I didn't want to distract too much from all the background techniques that are supposed to be the focus of this layout.

First I made a Silhouette cut file with all this text of baby Zylee's name and date of birth. When I first cut it out I used it as a stencil and sprayed it with grey mist. The mist didn't really cut it for me so I lined up the stencil again and this time spread gesso through it. Much better! And you still get the faint outline of grey which is a bit cool. I stamped in between the words and splattered my usual paint and pearls. I ended up using the same cardstock letters from my original Silhouette cut for my title rather than mixing in another font. As I said, it all became a bit fiddly, but I kinda like it anyway :-)



Supplies: