Technique Tuesday #6 Watercolour Night Skies

Hello!

Welcome to my first Technique Tuesday of 2017! Unfortunately I'm afraid you'll have to suffer a couple of Christmas cards again for this, but the next one will be non Christmasy I promise!

Today's cards are showcasing some backgrounds where I played around with making a night sky with distress inks.

For the first card I blended some Blueprint Sketch and some Wilted Violet straight onto some smooth watercolour paper with my markers and then added water with a large brush and blended them together where they met for a subtle ombre effect. I added a little Chipped Sapphire towards the top to darken it a bit more.

Once dry I added some drops of water left for a while and then blotted to lift the colour in some spots. Then I gave it a liberal spray of glimmer mist.

Once fully dry again I added some dots of white acrylic paint and added some small 'stars' with a Sakura Silver Star Gelly Roll pen.

I cut a curved shape from white cardstock and then stamped coloured and cut out the 2 snowmen from the Mama Elephant Polar Pals set along with the star garland from the same set and popped them all up with a little foam tape.

Then I stamped and heat embossed a sentiment from the Mama Elephant Polar Pals set, which I bent a little to follow the shape of the aperture I'd cut from white cardstock to frame the scene. I glued the whole scene onto my base card.

Finally I added my 'frame' with some foam tape for a little dimension and finished with a few glittery enamel dots.

For my second card I played around with a kind of galaxy sky. I used Chipped Sapphire and Faded Jeans distress inks applying fairly randomly and blending but keeping the middle a little lighter.

Then I added some drops of water as before, but this time I went back and added some more and moved it around a bit for a more splotchy look.

I then flicked on some white acrylic paint and finished with some small dots with a glitter pen. Then I cut it to size and glued it on my card base.

I coloured the penguins from the Polar Pals set with my distress ink markers to look a bit like robins and cut them out with the matching dies. Then I cut a small circle of white cardstock and embossed with some glitter embossing powder. I cut a strip of white cardstock and cut an angle at one end and stamped on a sentiment from the same set. I glued on the 'moon' and them arranged my robins and sentiment strip on some foam tape for dimension.

Finally I added a few clear gems to the sky and a couple of glitter enamel dots to the sentiment strip.

Items Used

Plain white cardstock

Hot pressed watercolour paper.

Versafne Ink Black Onyx

Versamark ink

Silver Embossing Powder

Mama Elephant Polar Pals Clear Stamp Set

Mama Elephant Polar Pals Creative Cuts

Distress Ink Markers

Clear Gems 

Whimsy Stamps Winter Wishes Enamel Dots

Sakura Gelly Roll Pen Silver Star

White Acrylic Paint

That's all from me today, but I hope you've enjoyed my post today and feel inspired to try some night skies, I may try my hand at some Northern Lights or Fireworks next time I try them!

Seasons Greetings

Happy Christmas Eve!

I had a play with my watercolours for this card, using Worn Lipstick, Ripe Pumpkin, Fossilized Amber and  Crushed Olive laid on in loose stripes of colour and then blended with lots of water.

Once dry  I broke out my embossing folder again, to make the panel for this card but before gluing it on I gave it a liberal spray of a gold glimmer mist for a lovely sheen and sparkle (this shows up much better in real life and looks gorgeous).

I heat embossed a greeting in white on a strip of vellum and wrapped that around my panel before adhering the panel to my card base.

Then I popped on the 2 little snowmen from the Mama Elephant Polar Pals set. These were coloured with distress ink markers in Tumbled Glass, Ripe Pumpkin, and Worn Lipstick and then given a good coat of Wink of Stella to make them sparkle.

I finished off with a few enamel dots from Whimsy Stamps Summer Breeze set to echo the colours I used.

That's all from me today, I have a ton of stuff to do to prepare for tomorrow and I'm nurswing another cold, grrr I thought I was safe having already had one, hopefully I'll fight it off before tomorrow.

I hope your Christmas preparations are going well and I will catch up with you all after the big day.

Have fun!

 

Christmas Robin

Morning!

Oh my, Christmas Eve tomorrow, it's starting to get exciting! It's also my last day at work now until next Wednesday...yay!

I have another card today to share with you using the adorable Mama Elephant Polar Pals set. I made this very similarly to how I made yesterday's card but this one was a little simpler as I skipped the embossing and the vellum, stamping straight onto the base card. I also just used one of the penguins robins, but I brought the red colour up onto his cheeks to blend in more with the robin on the design paper.

I finished with a few glittery red enamel dots from my stash.

That's all from me today, but I will pop in tomorrow for another share.

Take care out there!

Penguins or Robins?

Hello! 

Just 3 days to go till Christmas, are you all ready? I almost am, just a few last minute things and then I'm done, but I'm working today and tomorrow still, so it still feels like a bit of a tight deadline lol.

So I'm sharing a couple of Christmas cards with you today but no time for links I'm afraid, though you can find most of them in my previous Mama Elephant posts.

Firstly I have a little shaker card using the penguins stamps from the Polar Pals set and eat embossed vellum instead of an acetate window.

For my second card I did something a little different. A few weeks back my friend Faye, coloured up the Stamping Bella Sweaty Chicks stamp to look like penguins.I thought this was an awesome idea and said she should colour them up to look like robins next......and she did.

So when I looked at these penguins I thought...hmm..I bet these would look good as robins, and I think they really work.

No shaker element to this, though I did use the same layout and I couldn't resist giving the top hat the paper piecing treatment with this fab tartan paper.

Which do you prefer?

That's all for today but I'll be dropping in tomorrow with some more festive fun.

Simple Snowman Cards

Hello!

Christmas is creeping ever closer and I'm gradually getting things done, but I'm still at work right up until Christmas Eve, so every second counts lol.

I have 2 more Christmas cards for you today, but in the essence of getting things done quickly, I haven't linked all the stamps and dies used, however you can find them all in my previous recent posts using the Polar Pals set from Mama Elephant. 

The colouring is done with distress inks and the papers are from an old Whimsy Stamps pad called Merry and Bright, that is still available at Dies to Die for.

I'll be back tomorrow with some more cards to share,

Happy holidays to those who have started theirs already!

Penguins and Holly

Happy Monday!

Well this should have gone live this morning, but guess who forgot to hit 'Publish' after scheduling.....doh!

I have another CAS Christmas card to share with you using the Mama Elephant Pola Pals stamp and die set.

This time I used the other stamps from the set, the Penguins. I coloured them up with my distress markers, cut them out with the matching dies and popped them on a card with some holly patterned paper from my stash and edged that with some red cardstock.

I added a couple of little banners with a sentiment heat embossed with white on the red one and finished off with a few red and white matte enamel dots.

Mama Elephant Polar Pals Stamp Set
Mama Elephant Polar Pals Matching Die Set
Whimsy Stamps Shaker Builder - Sweetest Birthday
MFT Double Stitched Rectangle Die
Your Next Stamp Fishtail/Banner Die
La-La Land Stitched Circles Die
Whimsy Stamps Christmas Cheer Enamel Dots

I'll see you tomorrow with another Technique Tuesday

Mama Elephant - Polar Pals

Hello!

I've been super busy at work recently, but I've still managed to get some Christmas crafting done in my down time.....quite a lot of cards actually. How you ask? Well I bought a Mama Elephant Polar Pals Stamp Set and matching dies, and proceeded to see how many different CAS cards I could knock out with them. I surprised even myself.

Now these are all super quickly made cards, no do not expect my colouring to be perfect, it's not it was quick, but it will serve to show that you don't need fabulous colouring skills to make great cards, you can colour some things up simply and very quickly and still be pleased with your end result.

So...enough yap, I have 2 cards to share with you today, I made them very similar, using the same basic layout and elements and just changed up which snowman stamp I used and the accent colour and sentiment, but the rest is more or less the same making the 2nd one even faster to make. 

You  could make a whole batch of these with different accent colours and sentiments etc and they would all still be individual.

I used Wink of Stella on both the snow bank and the snowmen and pole, which gives them a lovely frosty sparkle, but sadly as usual I could not seem to pick it up on camera, but it does look so lovely in the flesh.

Items used

Plain White Cardstock

Distress Ink Markers

Memento Inks

Mama Elephant Polar Pals Stamp Set

Mama Elephant Polar Pals Die Set

Mama Elephant Jingle Greetings
MFT Double Stiched Rectangle Stax
MFT Inside and Out Stitched Rounded Square Stax

Galeria Papieru Snow Queen Paper

Whimsy Stamps Stitched Border Trio Die

Summer Breeze Enamel Dots

Wink of Stella Clear Pen

With a little extra work these would also make great shaker cards.

That's all from me today but I'll be back tomorrow with my card for The Ribbon Girls final challenge for 2016 (and no it's not CAS!)

Have a great Saturday!