Colour Block Backgrounds

Happy Spring Morning.

Today the sun has decided to make a rare appearance, giving me hope that the spring rainy season will come to a close in the near future. This is the perfect time to be doing a post showing some bright beautiful fun cards.

My phone has been suggesting more and more YouTube videos to me lately and admittedly I have watched a few. The Jennifer McGuire series have popped up a lot and I have been enjoying those immensely. So today I will be showing off what I made after watching her Color Blocking Techniques video (I'll put the link at the end of this post). I had a ton of fun and made some wonderful cards.

The supplies I picked to try out this technique, I had either not used in a long time or had never used before. I pulled out the 6 Vivid stamp pads that I have had since the beginning of my card making, back about 22 years ago. The tree stamp I have had for about 15 years and the cute girls under the umbrella and on the bike I bought a few years ago second hand and have never used. This was a great opportunity to bring them out and play.

This technique was fun and playful and the cards turned out nice and bright. I will try it again using some of the deeper colours in my collection to compare the finished results. The white embossing stands out beautifully against the vivid colours and it will be interesting to see how it looks on other colours.

Here's the link   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPRqVbCZ6OY&list=LLrPw3KR7TMCTKUPVvRy-_3g&index=7&t=0s

Hope you are having a lovely spring!

RedBear

A stamp technique for use with stamps without designs

Hello again. Here is the post I had planned to do next. Zoo sent me a Two Minute Tuesday YouTube video by Connie Stewart  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfpDahwmGzs&list=PLxCtNfpskJFdwaN-N-l1VWQ31GZrPZzRS&index=34&ab_channel=ConnieStewart    and the following is my first experimentation with the techniques. I had a blast, ended up with completely inked up hands and can't wait to do some more. 

The first stamp that I came across that was flat without any detail was a butterfly from the StampinUps Flight of the Butterfly stamp set (the all black on in the case).

I stamped the butterfly with my StampinUp Tangelo Twist ink pad, stamped it off a number of times on a scrap piece of paper, then used the chain link fence stamp by Finnabair, inked in StampinUp's Cajun Craze ink to add the detail. The difference in the below images is from the number of times I stamped it onto the scrap paper. I then tried to add the body of the butterfly in the correct place and it didn't work the best. That of course took me on a sidebar thought process into making my own MISTI type stamp placement tool but that will have to wait for a future post.

The below picture is all the design stamps I used in this technique practice. I will add others as I come to them. 

 

The next unadorned stamp I used was a simple flower from the StampinUp set called A Beautiful Thing. I did end up using the detailed stamp from that set and had difficulty placing it in the right spot of the stamped image (hence more thought into making my own MISTI).

Here on in, shows the end of session one of making new stamps from existing ones in my cupboard. Me, being me.. I could not see wasting the tap off twice ink onto scrap paper or my work surface, so you can see I incorporated the original inked plain flower onto the page and then stamped the new designs around it. I had sooo much fun doing this and the pages turned out so sweet.

Here is a closer up couple of the flower samples. As I said above, I inked in tangelo Twist and then I experimented inking the detail in the same tangelo twist and also in StampinUp's Cajun Craze and Island Indigo. 

These two StampinUp background stamps are my ultimate favourites so of course they came out in the experiment. One of my favourite designs with this new technique is using the right (lines) background stamp and using the twist. It produced the coolest design ever.

 Upon coming home later that day, I once again sat in my craft room and played with this new technique. This time I used my plain square stamps, which I had purchased years ago with ideas in my head that did not work in real life. As I never get rid of stamps, ever, I had them still for experimenting with and I love them both in the sampling.

These two stamps are made by Shadow Stamps and the small one is A1873 Background 1 and the big one is A1875 Shadow Stamp 111.

The colours I used for big square samplings were tangelo twist and cherry cobbler by StampinUp.

I used the design stamps from above but added more of the green background plates. These came from the local Rewards Store's clearance bin and don't have a brand name that I can find. They are not stamps per say but I use everything as stamps for the most part. (the sentiment stamp I borrowed off Zoo and didn't use until the blue samples using the small squares. A note about word stamps and this technique... they end up reversed and backward which upon talking to Zoo is a great idea for making reverse stamped images for things we have wanted to stamp in another direction. Another future post, lol.)

I love this sampling. The square is large and thus the design added is more defined. It is two colours I love together and in general makes my day.






For the final sampling, I used the small square and two darker colours. I used the Island Indigo and Navy by StampinUp and the finished product reminded me of denim which I love. This one took the longest and hurt the hand/elbow the most because the stamp was only about an inch square but it is so adorable.

After playing with the technique I, of course, had to make some cards. I used up all of the flower paper and then saved one of each of the square samplers to send to Zoo. As usual, the pictures don't show the true colours but I did try out some new flag sort of designs that came to mind for the first ones and then used up a butterfly on the remainder of the flower ones. I used my home made MISTI to place the three hellos om the strip of paper at the side.

For the first tangelo/cherry cobbler big square design card I used a Yo-Yo I had made months ago that was the perfect colour (see a couple of posts previous to this one). I used a pair of the kids funky scissors and I think it turned out beautiful.

I hate to cover up all the hard work of the sampling so I tried to make the designed paper the focal point for the most part. In the ones below I used up scraps from cutting the edges with the funky scissors and I love how they turned out.

I used my home made MISTI for placing the 'To' and 'You' words. I added the tag at the bottom but thought it needed some green at the top so added the  2 words.



Over all I had an awesome time playing with Connie Stewart's stamp kissing technique and look forward to doing some more in the future. We will see what comes first... me playing with this technique some more or something else Zoo sends me to focus my attention on. Your guess is as good as mine : )


Have a great night!

Red Bear

Lattice Edged Cards

Hello again. Long time no share : )         

As discussed in the previous post, I will do up a quick share with the lattice cards I made with the template from this lovely lady's blog. Zoo sent it to me and of course, I had to try. Who knew how easy this would be and how much fun detail it adds to cards. Definitely should be on your to-do list.

I fell in love with the Chicks stamps set from StampinUp's Salebration earlier this year. They are the most adorable little things and I could just do a million cards with them (admittedly, I did do a ton of them at first. Only two with the lattice, though). The bows were from a video Zoo sent out and I love them to death. Origami folded so are nice and flat and cheap to mail. The What's Up stamp is a $1.50 one from Micheal's and the Happy Big Day stamp is from StampinUp and Zoo sent the stamped tag to me.

These adorable giraffe's were stamped at Zoo place and brought home to play with. The first one I placed overlapping a piece of paintable wallpaper left over from a reno job. I used my watercolour wax crayons to add colour and I love this card. Simple but sweet.

This floral stamp, Zoo stamped 5-6 years ago on her scrap crap paper and mailed to me. I used my water colour pencil crayons to add colour and then highlighted with gel pens. The metal hole ribbon behind was from the dollarama years ago. It is awkward to glue on (I used my two way glue on the parts seen and double sided tape under the flower) but is an awesome addition to the card.

Since falling in love with lattice edged cards I went out and found some super cheap, on clearance templates to do more. Doing the template along the edge of the paper is the easiest, as scissors can be used. Doing the template on the interior of the card is harder on the hand, as a sharp papertole knife needs to be used. Either makes a beautiful image but so far I have only made cards with the small circle ones. I will add picture of future cards when I have time to make them. For now the only two I have done are shown on the last post I did earlier today, using the Time Warp stencil.

Well, again... have a great day. I need to move and get away from the laptop. 

Cheers, Red Bear : )

Corner Heart Punch

Good morning. I have had a little post it note with some information to make a post on the counter for a couple of weeks now and have finally sat down to do it. Funny how life gets in the way of the to-do list.

In any case... I had filled a little box of corner heart punches at Zoo's place before moving East, years ago. I have never used them and as the theme of this year is to use things I have had forever, it was high time to delve in. All the punches were on scrap pieces of paper of varying sizes and colours.

I first used the larger pieces that had a punch in each of the four corners. I used mainly Dollarama 6"x6" paper pads that I have had for years and not used. The two pads I used were the Rainbow Scrapbook and the Flower Scrapbook pads. I hope Zoo will add the name of the company who made the punch. I like how the hearts are not quite cut out and so I could add another layer of paper under the top of each heart to add dimension. The cards are bright and yet not too overpowering. I tend to not use patterned paper but this was a good use of the bolder patterns I had been avoiding. 

Having used up the larger pieces it was time to move onto the more narrow bits that only had two heart punched per piece. I used Zoo's Spellbinder's Curved Border's dies to make one edge more decorative. I was originally going to have a piece of the card slide in and out of the heart punch paper but then decided to just use a big flower instead. I added a coordinating colour under each corner punch to add interest and a small stamp in between. The big flowers are from using a friends dies and Big Shot years ago. I believe the biggest flower is from StampinUp and the smaller ones are from my McGill Petite Petals Punch and my Martha Stewart's Floral Anywhere Punch. A good use of paper I would not normally use

I have more punched corners remaining but ran out of time. I will get to them in the years to come.   Happy November!

Red Bear : )

Transferring images using packing tape and stencils.

Happy Snow day!

We had a lovely day off work to get outside and shovel out three driveways and then hibernate indoors with our hobbies. Myself, I ventured into my craft room and experimented with packing tape, stencils and magazine pages. Zoo's fault, yet again, due to her sending me another link to put in the 'do' or 'not do' pile. Originally I didn't think I wanted to try this, as the result is shiny and I wondered if I could do anything else on top of the packing tape layer. This morning, however, it tickled my fancy and I gave it a try.

In the video, the lovely lady uses magazine pages, stencils and packing tape, all of which I have on hand, so away I went.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtAGnlU3s8U&feature=em-share_video_user

 This stencil is one of my oldest and is from Simply Stencils By Plaid, 28530 Hearts, Checks and Gingerbread

The following three are from a cheap kids set I found somewhere years ago.

 These two are from Stampin'Up, Dots and Stripes decorative masks. The stripes was hard to get the tape off of.

This stencil didn't work the best. In the video, she warns that we need to rub hard or use a brayer to get the tape to stick through the stencil in finer design areas. I used a brayer over thick foam but this one didn't work. Later I used my embossing stylus to rub in the smaller dots and details of the other stencils, but I guess I forgot this one. Good life lesson.

My neighbour, who sews, gave this one to me. It says 28760Bulk on it and may have come from a fabric store.

 I decided before I started that I would place the finished tapes onto pages I had already painted or sumi smooshed. This way I felt I was adding another layer to pages to make cards, or into altered art books for further development.

This last page with the green, I cut up and made cards out of. The gloss from the tape adds a nice dimension to the cards and I also used up some of the stamped paper Zoo had sent me months ago. Some of the stamped images are just photo copies she had sent, but I used them to finish the cards and I like how they turned out. The pictures don't do them justice.

So that has been my fun day with packing tape transfers. I hope the weather adds more fun so I can escape to my craft room more often.  Cheers everyone.   Red Bear : )