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!!
I don’t know about you, but I have hundreds and hundreds of card photos stored in my computer and my typical habit is to edit them for blog posts or to post on social media then pop them over to my CopyCatCard file! Once that’s done, I delete them from Camera Uploads but unfortunately, I often forget that step! During this time of social distancing, I’ve been working on cleaning up my files and came across a number of cards that I never edited and so they were never used for a blog or Facebook post! I thought I’d share them with you today! You’ll see that I have quite a few cards made with some of Alex Syberia Designs like this one above! I printed it onto Bristol Smooth card stock and then colored the blossom with my Zig markers. After die-cutting the image into a circle, I mounted it to a white base card which I’d embossed with a lovely folder I have. I think that script is so elegant, don’t you? The sentiment is from Unity Stamps. Here’s another one of Alex’s designs called Roses Bouquet which I stamped onto Bristol Smooth and painted, again using Zig markers! I think the sentiment is from Taylored Expressions Simple Strips set! This card features a stamp made by Crafty Individuals called Summer Poppy Meadow. I have to admit that I didn’t check to see the actual dimensions of this stamp when I ordered it, assuming it was a full A2 size! It was quite disappointing to see the actual size when it arrived but it’s still a beautiful image and easy to work with! I paired it with a black and white striped panel of a store bought card I had in my stash! I made this card over a year ago (maybe two?) and I’ve kept it for myself instead of selling it! The simple yet striking lotus blossom was drawn by Luisana Lowry for her collection of digital stamps she called Red Hibiscus Designs and I was honored to be asked to create cards for her! I colored this blossom with Copic markers and paired it with a background I had in my stash. A little gold cord and a few sequins are pretty details! How gorgeous is this moth?! Another one of Luisana’s designs, it’s not something I would typically be interested in, but I loved coloring this! My Copics collection was fairly new and quite limited at this point but with the excellent tutorials that Luisana has shared, I learned so much and just love how beautifully this came out! The background was made with Hero Arts Everything Flower stamp and I think I colored directly on the stamp, misted with water then stamped it onto Bristol Smooth card stock. A perfect pairing, if I do say so myself! Oh! That bold sentiment is from Stamplorations! I just love this card! It’s a print I found on Pinterest and it came with the blue background so all I had to do was color the flowers! I believe I used Prismacolor pencils on this because I had to print it onto regular weight card stock. The addition of Glossy Accents on some of the blossoms give it a really nice touch! Sentiment is Taylored Expressions Simple Strips! When Alex Syberia created her first line of digital stamps, she invited me to design cards to help promote the line and I was honored and happy to do so! This image is called Spring Bouquet and you can find it here in her Etsy shop! Because I printed this with an inkjet printer, the ink smudged a bit but I used the printer ink as my gray and just went with it! Here’s the same image in orange and yellow; I like the addition of the Tim Holtz Hello die popping out of it! Another colorful card using Spring Bouquet, again letting the printer ink be my gray for coloring. Alex rocked the flower frame with this digi called XOXO Floral! What a glorious array of blossoms and leaves to frame the hand-lettered XOXO! I used Prismacolor pencils for this card, die-cut it with Gina Marie Designs Stitched Rectangle die then mounted it onto a base card made with heavy patterned paper! My last card is a simpler design featuring a sweet little Stampendous set called Sunshine Daisy! I colored it with Copics, die-cut it into an oval and adhered it to the dotted paper oval. The embossed base card is perfect with it’s display of petals, right?! The sentiment is from Butterfly Reflections, Ink set called Let’s Flamingle. Here’s the inside of the Daisies card with the rest of the sentiment! I leave you with this sympathy card done in restful colors of nature and Papertrey Ink’s Meadow Greensstamp set. I heat embossed the ferns with clear powder then sponged oxide and distress inks over them for a resist look, one of my favorite simple techniques! The sentiment is from an old Stampin Up set. Thanks for coming with me on this little walk through my computer files!
Hi there! Today I’d like to share a series of cards I’ve made recently! I was poking around in my Instagram saved cards collection and came across THIS one made by Maura R. It’s vivid colors and bold design struck me anew and so I decided it was time to live up to my CopyCat name and have a go at replicating it! I found a flower sketch on Pinterest that was similar to Maura’s huge blossom and printed 4-5 copies out onto watercolor paper. Pictured above is the first card I made using Altenew’s Watercolor Brush markers, a black Zig for the bold outlines and a black Posca pen for the finer details. A spattering of black and white paint added the final detail before I added the Tim Holtz stickers, raised up off the panel.I loved making my first card so much that I jumped right into a second one, this time a Slimline style and used a lot of purple and blue on the blossom. I love how that orange background really makes the flower pop! More Tim Holtz stickers finish the card with a meaningful sentiment.Because a combination of orange and aqua really appeal to me, I made another card like my first one.My fourth card features a jade green blossom with a deep red background; I love the unusual color of this flower and it’s yellow leaves!Another blue and orange card!
Enter a captionI decided to try my hand at drawing my own image~ someone really liked the sentiment on this one and bought my card!
I drew this one too and sold it!I created another slimline card and wrote out a quote about kindness by Mr. Rogers. I loved making each and every one of these cards and hope you enjoyed seeing them! Thanks for visiting!
I wasn’t planning to write a blog post about this card- okay, actually, it never occurred to me to write a post! I just pulled out this gorgeous new stamp set by Stampendous and went crazy with it! But someone requested a post to describe how I made this so here I am! I’ll try to remember to at least snap some photos of the process the next time I make a card! But for today I’ll just explain my process!The name of this set is Cling Garden Mum and it comes with a beautiful flourish stencil and some gorgeous samples depicted on the back of the packaging! I was so inspired by the samples! To begin my card, I taped the stencil to a panel of watercolor card stock and sponged on Broken China distress oxide ink. The next step was to heat emboss the giant mum directly to the stenciled panel using black embossing powder. I decided to use my Bister watercolor powders to fill in the blossom; the depth of color is determined by how much powder and how much water you add! I tried to create shading with the use of both! When the flower was colored in I decided to add the row of flourishes down the right side; to do that, I stamped them in Versamark then heat set them with clear embossing powder. I then sponged a layer of Black Soot distress ink over the whole panel, trying to stay away from the blossom. This, of course, made those flourishes pop! If you look at the top left you’ll see where I stamped on a scripty stamp using a little water then removed the dampness with paper towel. This left a faint impression for yet another detail! My card looks far more complicated than it actually was! To finish it off, I trimmed down my watercolor panel and adhered it to a base card of textured aqua card stock then added the sentiment strip. I like how this pops against the colorful background! I typically keep my inside panel quite basic with a sentiment or a coordinating strip of patterned paper as a band at the bottom, but this time I went all out! I used Technique Junkies Zinnia’s with Monarch stamp in Hickory distress oxide ink right over the stenciled pattern which I did first! I heat embossed the sentiment onto a scrap of pink then cut it with a label punch. I think I can still write a message inside despite all the other stuff going on here! I had so much fun making this card and hope I’ve inspired you to play with your own stencils and stamps! Thanks for your visit!
Hey! Welcome back! I’ve been remiss in keeping up my blog this summer but want to share this colorful creation with you! I recently bought a set of Altenew’s Watercolor Brush markers in the Spring Garden collection and wanted to use lots and lots of color! This gorgeous floral image is a background stamp from The Ton called Anemone Garden and I began by embossing it with gold onto a panel of Bristol Smooth watercolor paper. Aren’t those markers so cool? They have a barrel filled with color and you just squeeze the sides (like we do a water brush!) to release the ink. It took a little practice to figure out just how much to squeeze but to paint this image, I first brushed a little water onto a petal then dropped ink from the marker into it, letting the water move the ink initially. In true Alex Syberia style, I added several colors to the petals, creating a multi-colored array of fabulousness! I filled in the background with black to make the colors pop even more! Setting that panel aside to dry, I pulled out a white card base and again, heat-embossed Anemone Garden in gold onto it. I trimmed down the watercolored panel using my new Sizzix Thinlet Stacked Deckle dies and then layered it onto a panel of gold metallic card stock to frame it. I mounted the framed panel to my base card and added a sentiment from Taylored Expressions Simple Strips set which I’d also embossed in gold. Two little gems adorn the ends of the Sentiment Strip for a final detail! I loved making this glorious card and using some new products! Thanks for stopping by!
Most stampers and card makers know that the term “CASE” means “copy and share everything” and I DO like to copy!! I’m continually impressed and inspired by other’s work and today’s card is no exception! Lauren Lovato is a designer for Brutus Monroe and she recently shared THIS card which I fell in love with! I’m always drawn to watercolored, spatter-y backgrounds and leaves and sprigs are some of my favorite design elements! Her card combined both so I had to CASE! (Technically, I made this card prior to seeing Lauren’s aforementioned card!) This was made specifically for my daughter’s birthday; Sara is an amazing poet and going to grad school this fall for Writing and Publishing. I’m so proud of her for pursuing her goals and “following her bliss”! The very first thing I did was to heat-emboss in black this encouraging sentiment from Stamplorations into the center of a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock. I then pulled out an old Stampin Up set called Remarkable You which I recently found on ebay and heat-embossed the leaves image using Versamark ink and then clear embossing powder. Next, I tapped out Fossilized Amber distress oxide ink onto my craft mat, spritzed with water and laid my card stock into it, then repeated that process with Mowed Lawn distress ink, and Forest Moss distress oxide ink, drying in between layers with a heat tool. As a nod to the written word, I had to add the Dictionary background stamp by Stampin Up in black over the whole card front. I rubbed off the excess inks with a paper towel to reveal the crisp white leaf outlines. Lastly, I sponged Black Soot distress oxide ink around the edges then mounted the panel to a white card base. I really, really love this card and Sara did too! I think it’s quite ironic that I had just created the Follow Your Bliss card for Sara, and then saw Lauren’s card online! Here’s my CASE of hers! Again, I used Stampin Up’s Remarkable You leaves image and embossed them in black onto a panel of Bristol Smooth. Using Zig markers, I began by scribbling a little Deep Blue into the crannies between the stems of the leaves, then moved and blended the ink outward with a water brush. I did a section at a time, letting it dry in one area then going back in to add another layer of color and water. When the dark blue background was filled in, I used Dark Pink on the leaves and again, a waterbrush to move the ink. Persian Green was then added to the leaves and blended with more water. I like that the Pink and Green colors bled into the Deep Blue background! I happily spattered on all three Zig colors and a little extra black then die-cut the circle of vellum, embossed the sentiment with black powder and attached it to my watercolored panel. A few little jewels added extra pizzazz and a black card base finished my card! Thanks to Lauren for her inspiration! I hope you will take the time to view her creations on her Instagram page or blog!
CopyCatCards 