Birthday Blooms

Hello, Tallie here. I'm back today with one of my favourite floral sets: Concord & 9th's Grateful for Everything. I have used this set multiple times but never get bored of colouring or creating differently themed cards. Today, it's a birthday card and I've paired it with the MFT Bitty Birthday Wishes set for a great sentiment.

I started out by stamping the spray of flowers in some MFT Extreme Black Ink onto some blending card stock. I coloured these in with my alcohol markers, sticking to bright reds and a couple of different shades of green for the leaves. I've coloured this stamp in quite a few times and have found that it looks a lot better if you get some really deep colour into the centre of the flower, so I deepened up the shadows with some darker grey markers. I added some black gel pen to add some raised dimension for the inner flower.

I used some blue-green markers to colour in the background, going deeper with the colours immediately around the flower and leaves to give some dimension. The background looked a little plain, so I used my black gel pen to randomly add some dots around the flower spray.

The sentiment was a simple white-heat embossed greeting from the MFT Bitty Birthday Wishes set onto a strip of black cardstock.

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

Accenting With Gold

Hello, Tallie here and a happy Wednesday to you!

Today I have a couple of cards that use gold accents to brighten up an otherwise clean and simple card design. I posted a couple of weeks ago using this Grateful for Everything set from Concord & 9th, but it really is fast becoming one of my favourites for a whole host of card designs.

The first set is a thank you card for a very kind and generous lady, and uses the main sentiment from the set. I love the mix of handwritten and typewriter fonts. I started out by masking off a strip along the top section of the card panel and stamping the main floral arrangement from the Grateful for Everything set. I then used the coordinating background stamps to stamp out the background in some Broken China Distress Oxide inks. This gave me a good base to colour with my alcohol markers.

I used a strip of gold mirror board to adhere along the bottom of the panel, stamping out the sentiment towards the bottom right corner. A gold gel pen helped to accent the colouring and tie in the gold strip.

As I was making this card I received the sad news that one of my family members passed away so my next card is a sympathy card. I followed the same process, only colouring in the flowers with yellows and oranges. Again, I used the gold strip at the bottom of the coloured panel and stamped out the 'WITH SYMPATHY' sentiment from the MFT Essential Sentiments set.

This design is really versatile, especially if you are limited on time and do not want to colour a whole panel. The background stamps really help to speed up the colouring process!

Thanks for reading!

Tallie

 

Watercolour Florals

Hello! Tallie here with some bright and cheerful watercolour inspiration.

The Grateful for Everything set from Concord & 9th is perfect for stamping out in multiples and just playing with the colour!

I started out by stamping the main floral stamp from the set onto some watercolour paper with some Versafine Black Onyx ink. This is actually quite a large stamp so I knew I would eventually be cutting down the panel. Once it had dried, I took out my watercolour paints and had some fun!

I think the secret to getting dimension is layers, building up the colour intensity to get the feeling of depth. I used bright, bold yellows, greens and reds with a cerulean blue wash for the background. Once dried, I added a few paint splatters to help bring the flat background to life.

I die cut this panel out with an MFT Stitched Wonky Rectangle and mounted it onto a side folding A2 card base made of Lawn Fawn Sunflower cardstock. To finish off the card, I stamped a simple sentiment from the Lawn Fawn Simply Sentiments set.

I made a bunch of these in different colours using different sentiments for a variety of occasions!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

Grateful Twice!

 Hello! Hope you're having a lovely day. I'm just back for a guest post and as I love floral stamps, this Concord and 9th 'Grateful For Everything' set seemed a good candidate to be inked up. There's a great matching die set if you're not a fan of cutting out too

I thought I'd create using two different mediums and started off with a watercolour pen. You can get the same look using Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens and an AlteNew waterbrush. Stamp and and heat emboss with white embossing powder first

The set has these beautiful mini spatters that really soften the look around your image and also an image (that I've not used yet) to perfectly match up around the outside so you can have a watercolour-esque band of colour around your image. I decided to try a different look using pencils on black cardstock

Black cardstock isn't as straightforward to colour on without adding a white or light layer of pencil first. I did a shortcut and added a light wash of white acrylic paint which really sped the process up!

Using pencils is all about adding layer upon layer of different colour to get the dimensional look. I'm still learning using them, but love the softness they bring to a project. You could start off your journey with these Prima watercolour pencils and use them with or without water

I finished off the card with a few sequins and a little paint splatter from some white acrylic paint. You can see my mistake here as I was colouring at night and picked up a blue pencil instead of white for colouring around the outside!

I truly love this stamp set as there are so many looks you can get from it! The sentiments focusing on being grateful are wonderful too!

Thanks for joining me today, and I'll see you again sometime!

Keren xx