Colored Pencil GIngko Leaves

Hey everyone!  I'm up over on the Neat & Tangled blog sharing this card today featuring my new Have Courage set.

I so love the look of coloring on kraft, so I stamped the small ginkgo leaf sprig three times on kraft with white pigment ink.  Then I proceeded to color the leaves in with my Prismacolor pencils.  Really easy here, just two colors, I went in first and filled in with the light and then added details with the darker color.  

You can get a wonderful texture from colored pencils that I think really adds a lot to foliage images.

Once the coloring was done, I die cut the springs with the coordinating dies and arranged them around my sentiment.  The sentiment is from the Calathea set and was embossed in white onto a circle.

I fiddled a bit with the placement of the sprigs.  My original plan was to create a circular frame around the round sentiment piece, but I ended up pulling the sprigs out a bit to create a more organic arrangement, plus I like the bits of white that peek through amongst the leaves.

That's all for me today.  Hope your week is going well!

*Affiliate links in text to Neat & Tangled and below to Ellen Hutson 

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Have Courage

Neat & Tangled Dies, Have Courage

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Calathea

Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils, Set of 36

VersaMark Ink Pad

Ranger Super Fine Embossing Powder, White

Scotch Foam Mounting Tape

Hello You with Calathea, Inspired by Sveta

I'm sharing this card over on the Neat & Tangled blog today featuring my Calathea set.

It's actually my take on this card that my teammate Sveta.  Sveta used the Calathea set to create a light, bright, tropical look, but I'm in the mood for fall, so I went with fall colors and used more of the fuller leaves.

I used Altenew inks and a mix of first generation, second generation, and rock and roll stamping.  To add a little more drama/focus on the center I also did some light inking on the edges of my panel with Antique Linen Distress Ink.



The sentiment is from the Hello You mini and was stamped with the help of my MISTI.  I didn't use the MISTI for the leaves because for this look some irregularity is not a big deal, plus it's faster.

That's all for me today.  Thanks for stopping by!

*Embedded affiliate links to Neat & Tangled store and below to Ellen Hutson

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Calathea

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Hello You

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Parrot

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Dark Chocolate

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Forest Glades

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Autumn Blaze

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Firebrick

Ranger Distress Ink Pad, Antique Linen

True Friends

Hey everyone!  I'm sharing this card over on the Neat & Tangled blog today.

I am just back from vacation, our family went out to South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, a totally different part of the country.  We saw the Ingalls Homestead, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the Black Hills, Little Big Horn, Devil's Tower, caves, rocks, trees, lots of climbing and hiking.  It was a great time, and I'm still in an outdoorsy soft of mood which spilled over into today's card.

I pulled out my Calathea set for today's card, I created a similar card a while back for the A Blog Named Hero Anniversary hop, with softer more nontraditional colors, but today I went with the greens.  Just random stamping, trying to balance things, using a mix of first and second generation stamping.

One little trick, when using inks that are good for solid stamps because they will kind of soften and blend a bit (think Altenew or Hero Arts), I will run my heat gun over my panel after each layer of stamping.  I feel like this gives you a crisper image so that the layers don't bleed into one another.

I wanted a softer, more earthy and warmer look to the card, so I used a cream rather than white panel.



Once my stamping was done, I used the recently released Together stamp and my MISTI for the sentiment.  I love a good one layer card and the Calathea set is perfect for this.

A cream mat and kraft based finished this off.  Hope you are having a wonderful week and thanks for stopping by!

*Affiliate links to N&T store in text and to Ellen Hutson below

VersaFine Ink Pad, Onyx Black

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Calathea

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Together

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Frayed Leaf

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Forest Glades

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Evergreen

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Moon Rock

Art Deco + Mondo Peony

I've got a Neat & Tangled / Ellen Hutson mash up going on today.

I found another of these Mondo Peonies that I had colored (with Copics) way back in the craft room over the weekend and I thought that my Art Deco background would be the perfect backdrop for it.

The background in black and white really balances the boldness of the flower.  The embossed sentiment is from the Calathea set.

I love how easy this card is (once you color the flower, or find a colored flower that is).  I think it would be gorgeous with the background in a metallic finish and a softer more delicate flower as well.

Short and sweet today.  Come back tomorrow.  I've got something special planned ;)

*This post contains affiliate links for Neat & Tangled (in post text) and Ellen Hutson (below)

Essentials by Ellen Clear Stamps, Mondo Peony by Julie Ebersole

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Art Deco

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Calathea

Scotch Double-Sided Foam Mounting Tape

A Blog Name Hero Hop

Hey guys, I've got a card over on the Neat & Tangled blog as part of the A Blog Named Hero Fifth Anniversary Celebration Hop.  There are all sorts of great hop prizes, so head on over there to see the full up card.

No Act of Kindness is Wasted

I had some extra time to create over the weekend and whipped up this card to share on the Neat & Tangled blog using my Calathea set which was released this past month.

I realized that all my release week cards used a natural and predictable color palate and I thought it would be fun to mix things up with some more unexpected colors.

I wanted to achieve an ombre look with the leaves and went the easiest route possible - one of Hero Arts' ombre ink pads.  Once that was decided I went about picking the rest of the inks.  The mid shade is Tropical Teal Hybrid ink from MFT, and the darkest is Desert Night from Altenew (another dye ink).  It's totally OK to mix companies and types of inks!  

The leaves were randomly stamped, and then the sentiment was placed to balance the leaves.

One of my favorite things about this set is that it's so forgiving and versatile  Yes, it's a multi-step image, but you can use one, two, or three layers and still get a great look.  Also, the whole lining things up process really only requires eyeballing.  I definitely was not consistent where things got stamped here in terms of that last layer and it looks totally fine.

So quick and easy.  This is a design you could easily mass produce and you can switch up the colors as well.  

Happy Wednesday and thanks for stopping by!

*Affiliate Links Below

Neat & Tangled Clear Stamps, Calathea

Hero Arts Ombre Ink Pad, Mint To Green

Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Pad, Desert Night

VersaFine Ink Pad, Onyx Black

Stretching your Stencils

One of the techniques I teach in my Craftsy class involves selectively cutting out portions of stencils to create a totally different design.

I had some time this weekend to just play and I pulled out my Parquet stencil.

It's rotated 45 degrees, and then I traced and then used a cutting knife to remove these alternating triangle portions.  I love what a different look this is.

Since I wasn't really planning ahead, I ended up with a cut out area that wasn't quite symmetical.  If I had planned ahead, I would have made it symmetrical and used it on the horizontal, adding the sentiment in the center.  But, I was flying by the seat of my pants here, so.....



I knew I wanted to pop the panel up over some black cardstock, but I wanted some brightness, too, so I cut three 1" squares of colored cardstock to add behind the squares/diamonds.  I found the perfect patterned paper to accent the design from an old BG 6x6 pad.

A simple partial sentiment from Calathea was embossed on black to finish this off.

I love this technique because it allows you to take one thing and create something totally different.  Hope you're inspired to take a fresh look at your stencils!

Mixing the old with the new and things you learn when you do so

Here's the thing.  I have SO MUCH OLD STUFF.  I mean, really old old stuff and it's kind of embarrassing.  After I stopped submitting for publication, I became much less concerned about having current papers/embellishments, so I mostly spend on stamps and dies and inks these days, which also means I tend to focus on those and not the old stuff.

This year I'm hoping to make a concerted effort to get that stuff out and use it more frequently.

(Full disclosure, I also have a lot of new stuff that I haven't used either....we'll talk about that another day.)

So lots and lots of oldies here, but interestingly enough my jumping off point was the two leaves.  They are from my new Calathea set.  They are the inner images associated with the leaf from this card.  But here I'm using them more like leaves for the flower, which is an old Webster's Pages embellishment.  The leaves were stamped on some patterned paper (also old) with rock and roll stamping for the first layer and then a sold dark color for the inner layer.  

The next piece I picked out was the journaling card, from an older Maggie Holmes collection.  Then came the little envelope (super old Studio Calico), with an acetate heart (even older Heidi Swapp) stapled in place with my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher.

I wanted to dress up the journaling card a bit, so I added some old MME Luxe rub-ons.  The sentiment is from my Dala Horse set and was stamped with Versafine.  To make sure it didn't smudge, I heat set it and a fun surprise, the heat caused the rub-ons to bubble up a bit.  I loved the fun texture it added, so I went ahead and heated up the rest of the rub-ons.  

I added a few patterned paper mats and stitching to finish things off.  

So fun to get out the old stuff and put it to use!  I'm hoping to do this more often this year.  

That's all for me today.  Have a great start to your week!

Neat & Tangled January Release is live and winner

Hey everyone!  The January release is now live in the store!

Here's a recap on my release projects:

I also need to announce a winner for my Calathea set.  The lucky commenter was from Day 3, comment 42.....

Dana!!!

Yay!  Shoot me an email and I'll get this sent out to you!

If you didn't win, don't worry, because with monthly releases there will be lots more opportunities to win this year!  Be sure to head on over to the store, I have a feeling those squirrels might not last long!