Yes, I’ve abandoned the flowers for a time and have gone to the dogs using a stamp set called Dog Kisses from Stampendous! Just look at those sweet faces! I’ve had this for some time but when I began binge-watching Stampendous’ youtube videos recently, I got really excited to get out many of my sets and be a CopyCat! If there’s anything you want to know about stamping, watercolor, heat-embossing, mixed media and many other card-making techniques you’ll find it there! This is the first card I made yesterday after following one of Fran’s (Owner and Chief Artistic Officer of Stampendous!) awesome videos!
One of the things that Fran does before starting to stamp and paint is to tape off the edges of her card stock. I used a little cutting board I bought just for this reason! So I got my two smallish panels taped and ready to stamp out a few of the little doggo’s and my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors to paint. I don’t own really good watercolor paints- yet! I’ll be purchasing the Daniel Smith paints recommended by Fran. After stamping out the dogs and sentiment I used a black Posca pen to hand-draw a border around the panel. I painted a light layer of color first then added some darker details. Fran shows exactly how to choose and mix colors, place the colors for shading and gives lots of helpful tips and information throughout the video! Here they are! All painted up and ready for a card! A pretty floral patterned paper plus a couple layers of yellow and aqua to coordinate with my colorful background made this a quick and easy slimline card to fit into a regular business sized envelope! I love the purple painted background on this one and found the perfect paper to finish off my card! The mustard layer behind the doggie panel was a piece of cardstock I’d unsuccessfully cut a cover die from and I thought it gave a little visual interest! I had so much fun creating those two cards that I wanted to do more, especially after watching a number of landscape/scene-building videos! I pulled out two more sets which I’ve not used much but will now that I know better how to work with them! The top set is called Scenic Meadow and is a cling set. The lower set is Meadow’s Edge, is a clear set and also has coordinating dies! I started by stamping the dogs, then added detail stamps from the two sets. I was a bit disappointed in myself for doing such a bad job with my painting! My paints didn’t move and blend the way I wanted and I forgot the rules of depth and lightness in regards to perspective. Bah!! Hence the ugly solid swaths of color on the trio of dogs panel! But I did have the fun of peeling off the tape to reveal the nice crisp white borders and decided to just go ahead and make these panels into cards anyway! I will keep watching the videos, keep practicing and get better! I think this card is pretty darn cute! Isn’t that a fun sentiment for it? (It’s Taylored Expressions Simple Strips!) Inside is a birthday greeting and any dog lover would get a kick out of it! Should I mention those…hand-drawn pines in the background?? NAH!! Let’s just say “boo-boo” and leave it at that! I love the trio of happy, smiling dogs and think that someone will like this card!! Last but not least, here’s the final card I made this morning! I determined to combine the two Meadow sets and add a doggie to sweeten it up! I did some stamping, then masking, used my Zigs for coloring along with my waterbrush and finally, added a sentiment from Gina Marie Designs. I hope I’ve inspired you to head over to see all the goodies at Stampendous, then zip on over to Youtube to watch some very inspiring videos and then get busy in your crafty place! Thanks for visiting today!!
Welcome back! As promised, here’s Part Two of my Mixed Media Canvases series! I can’t decide which of the canvases I like the most! But why choose just one?! I love them all, each for their own beauty and style! The style of this canvas is definitely vintage/feminine and a little shabby-chic! This time I began with an 8X10 hard canvas board, and coated it with a layer of tan craft paint. I then tore up some patterned papers and glued them down with Mod Podge. You can still see the striped piece toward the bottom and the vintage book page near the center top. Again, I forgot to get my camera set up in order to make a video and now I have to try and recall what on earth I did to make this! Yikes! I think that, after applying the torn pieces of paper, I just started using stencils and stamps to embellish the background. In this section I stamped out Tim Holtz’ Flower Garden blossoms and heat-embossed them with Brutus Monroe’s Coffee Grounds embossing powder. The butterfly ephemera was given to me by my crafty friend, Theresa! The sentiment is also by Tim Holtz and I heat-embossed it in white. I found the scroll-y die cuts in my stash, and added them with more Mod Podge, then smeared paint over them. In the center of the frame is another piece of ephemera from Theresa. I stamped and embossed Vintage Note from Stampendous over it. I love the white against the dark frame, don’t you? The larger white die-cut has a coat of Martha Stewart Pearl White craft paint, then some gray rubbed over it, and finally, another word stamp partially impressed onto it. I painted my blossoms with Gansai Tambi watercolors. Along the top and sides, I stamped Lace Borders from Stampendous, using Versafine Onyx Black ink, and added another stencil impression with pink paint. How about that lovely textured paper in this picture?! I didn’t really know it had that texture till I smeared paint and ink over it! I really like the dimension that the raised frame die-cut adds. I can’t wait to make some DIY gesso this weekend and add more texture and dimension to my next canvas! I’m sharing this canvas even though it’s not mixed media. I got a wild hair idea to pull out my alcohol inks and ended up making this instead! And I’ll write yet another post with more pictures to share the process for it! Thanks again for stopping by!
I’ve been on a mixed media kick lately after seeing the beautiful work done by Afia from CraftyMe! Be sure to take a peek at the gorgeous mixed media projects on her blog! I was so inspired to get messy and do some of my own! This is the first I did in my series of four (so far!) and it was a 5X7 canvas stretched over a wooden frame. I started the process while it was still on the frame, but then removed the canvas so I could lay it flat to work on. Sadly, I didn’t think to make a video of my process, so I’ll try to share the general idea of how I made this via the photos! To begin, I prepped my canvas with a coat of plain ol’ white craft paint and dried it with my heat tool. I then began to layer on stencils, using teal, black, rusty orange and white for the most part. I tried to arrange the images in an eye-pleasing format. I heat-embossed the floral spray (Demure by Penny Black) in black onto the canvas then painted it in with Gansai Tambi watercolor paints. The last two steps were to stamp in Versafine Onyx Black ink the vintage-y styled word stamp, then I heat-embossed in white BLESSED onto the canvas. I LOVE how this came out and jumped right into making my second one! Again, no video!! DUH! But I created this in much the same manner and removed it from the frame. I coated the canvas with a layer of tan craft paint, dried with a heat tool then started layering on stencils, using gray, black, red, pink, teal and white craft paints. I have a number of stencils which I collected a few years ago when I got into making Gelli prints . The large blossom is from a stencil I made using a stencil cutter which my husband bought for me back then! This part is quite textured because I tried to add a stenciled design using Thermoweb’s Transfer Gel, then changed my mind and scraped off most of the Gel which had already begun to dry. I don’t mind that it left some behind as it added great texture! I stamped this script stamp using Versafine Onyx Black ink. I love the texture of the canvas! This is another script stamp which I stamped with Versamark then heat-embossed with clear powder. I think it’s cool that it’s translucent! I’m going to end this post here but watch for Part Two in my Mixed Media Canvas series! Thank you for visiting! 🙂
I love being inspired by other artists, and these cards were totally inspired by someone I just found on Instagram! Afia, whose blog is here and Instagram here, just posted some cards that blew me away!! Here’s the first card which I fell in love with! Just look at that gorgeous color and the beautiful butterfly and that gold embossed detail! I decided to follow Afia’s process which she shared on her blog and made my cards in the same manner. I used my retired Stampendous Jumbo Dahlia and their current Mixed Mesh background stamp plus the Vintage Note stamp as well. My first step was to stamp the Mixed Mesh background stamp onto a panel of watercolor paper using Versafine Onyx Black ink. I dried it with a heat tool, then heat-embossed the Jumbo Dahlia using black powder. Next I painted the blossom and the background with Gansai Tambi watercolor paints, drying between layers. I mixed shades of reds, pink and orange for the Dahlia and greens and yellow for the background. When it was completely dry, I spattered some watery white paint over it. Next I heat-embossed in gold the Vintage Note stamp along the left hand side. Afia used gold embossing on her butterfly card and I love how it looks on mine! My watercolor panel was a little short, so I visually “extended” the panel by gold embossing a Lace Border (also an old Stampendous stamp!) along the bottom of my ivory base card. I cut a panel of gold metallic card stock to border the watercolor panel, then attached it to the card base. My final touch was to add a few sequins and adhere a sentiment which I heat-embossed in gold onto a scrap of black. I LOVE this card and although it looks nothing like Afia’s butterfly card, I thoroughly enjoyed copying her process! This is my second card following Afia’s process. This time I used a panel of Bienfang Canvas paper and stamped the Mixed Mesh background stamp onto it with Versafine Onyx Black ink then dried it with a heat tool. I heat-embossed in black the retired Jumbo Peony by Stampendous and then painted both with Gansai Tambi watercolor paints, drying between layers. Again, I used Stampendous Vintage Note and heat-embossed it in silver down the left side of the card. I added a strip of rose-colored Glitterstock as an accent, along with a few silver sequins. I think this textured card stock is the bomb, don’t you?! I embossed the sentiment in silver onto another scrap of black card stock and attached all the layers to a card base of white. I love both of my cards and now am heading over to Afia’s blog to see what will inspire me next! Thanks for stopping by!
I don’t really consider myself an “artist” per se and I can’t draw to save my life so creating beautiful art with rubber stamps is what I do instead! I found these little 4 X 6 canvases at the Dollar Tree and bought a bunch to play with! They’re the perfect size for my favorite Jumbo Poinsettia stamp by Stampendous! Sadly, it’s long retired, so you have to hunt it down on ebay or etsy. I’ve created a series of these to sell at the holiday craft fairs this season! I especially love the lavender and yellow background of this one! I coated the canvas with a layer of white craft paint which made a smoother surface to work on, and heat-embossed the image in black. I used my Gansai Tambi watercolor paints to do all of these.I actually painted this one first and I forgot to cover the surface with white craft paint first but it still worked! I do rather like the texture! Of course, I had to add black and white paint spatters!I love the dark background on this canvas and how it makes the red blossom really stand out! I used a white Posca paint pen to add highlights.Another gorgeous red poinsettia, this time on a soft golden background.
This was the last canvas I painted for the craft show; I decided to try painting a white blossom which of course, is more than just white! In hind sight, perhaps it’d be more true to life if I’d had a photograph in front of me to copy! I’m happy with it anyway and will be interested to see if these sell at the craft show! Thank you so much for visiting!
I’ve created this tutorial to help show you how I created this beautiful canvas. Be warned! I am super comfortable in the world of stamping, but this is only my second Video Creation, so please be patient with me!
How stunning is this?! It’s the first time I’ve used this gigantic image by Stampendous which I purchased on ebay. I heat-embossed it in white onto a piece of Bienfang Canvasette Paper Canvas and used Gansai Tambi watercolors to paint it! I decided to try my hand again at an eclipse card, so using my Etched Alphabet dies by Spellbinders, I cut out the letters MOM and set them aside. I adhered my panel to a layer of yellow card stock, then to a white card base. To pop the letters, I die-cut MOM in white fun foam, attached the painted letters to the top of the foam letters, then glued them into place on my card. Here’s another Stampendous Jumbo (Peony) and I’m not sure I like how dark this card is! But I also heat-embossed in white onto the Bienfang Canvasette Canvas paper, and used the Gansai Tambi paints. I spattered black and white watery paint onto the surface then trimmed the panel down to mount to yellow card stock, and a white card base. I heat-embossed the Altenew Label Love sentiment in black onto a scrap and lifted it with a bit of foam tape.
CopyCatCards 