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!!
CopyCatCards 