Art by Mi Ran - Angel of Hearts

Hi everyone, this is a scheduled post as it's my birthday today, so obviously I'm not blogging lol.

We have new challenge over at Deep Ocean Challenge Blog and this time it's

'Hearts'

Just right for Valentine's week no?

I fell in love with this digi called Angel of Hearts from Art by Mi Ran a while ago and I was so pleased to have the opportunity to use it. It was an absolute joy to colour! I printed her out fairly large as I really wanted the focus of the card to be her, and coloured her with my Distress Ink markers.

This image took me around 2 hours to colour as I really took my time with her as I wanted her to be perfect and I'm really pleased with the result. I fussy cut her out and popped her up on some foam tape. I did have to lose one small heart that wasn't 'attached' to th eimage, I originally meant to cut that separately and add it back on the card, but it want missing somewhere, so I hope Mi Ran doesn't mind.

DI Colours used:

Vintage Photo, Antique Linen. Walnut Stain, Worn Lipstick, Picked Raspberry, Spun Sugar, Victorian Velvet, Aged Mahogany, Fired Brick, 

I knew I wanted my card to echo the image, with lots of hearts, so I decided to use 2 sets of nesties dies that I've owned for a few years now, hearts and scalloped hearts. I cut the scalloped hearts from some plain coloured card stock in a few different shades to match my chosen design paper.

I used an old 6 x 6 Whimsy paper pack Romance from my drawer, it's been in there a long while, I'm a bit of a paper hoarder lol. I wanted to use as many of the designs as I could, so the different size hearts were great for that. 

To round off the design I used the Scripted Love Word Die from Whimsy Stamps. I cut this out 3 times in grey card stock, and glued them one on top of the other so that it resembled chipboard in thickness, covered it in glitter and placed it in the lower corner of my card.

I kept embellishment to a minimum as the card was already quite 'busy', so no lace, ribbon or flowers today, just a few enamel dots and some Tim Holtz Distress Glitter Dust in Vintage Platinum (love that colour!) on the wings and die cut word. As usual the sparkle doesn't show up well on camera, but I can tell you it looks delicious in the flesh.

I do hope you can join us, there is a lovely prize to be won from our sponsor, and don't forget to check out the stunning makes from the rest of the team.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Artistic Inspirations - Anything Goes/Twist of Valentine Design Team Favourite
Craft Your Passion - #298 Anything Goes
Crafty Cardmakers - Love, Love, Love Top 5
Dream Valley Challenges - Valentine's Day
Get Creative Challenges - Must Include Hearts
Where the Heart is - Love
Live & Love Crafts - Love is in the Air

I'll be back tomorrow with the first of my projects for Whimsy's February release, bye for now! :) xx

Distress Ink Colouring Tutorial 2 - Preparing Your Image for Colouring

Hi everyone! This is the 2nd of my series of colouring tutorials. I know I said the next one would be colouring skin, but I thought before I did that I had better mention how to prepare your image for colouring with distress inks.

For those who like to see this explained in pictures, I've made a small video below, which you can access here or on YouTube.

So you have your equipment and materials ready, you've chosen your image to colour, now all you need to do is to get that image onto your chosen watercolour paper.

For rubber or clear stamps you are going to want to use an ink that is not water soluble. As you will be using water with your inks, you do not want your ink to run and smear.

There are a few inks you can use. Some people swear by Stazon Ink. I've never tried this myself, but to be honest I'm not keen on it staining my stamps and as I can be quite messy I prefer something that will clean off my skin or whatever. You can use Archival Ink from Ranger, this comes in several different colours. Also I know at least one person that uses Memento Ink, which I found rather strange as it's water solouble, but I guess if you heat dry it, it might be ok, I've never tried it. I have Memento ink that I use with Copics, but in all honesty I'm too impatient to wait for ink to dry overnight or heat setting it, I just want to get in there and colour lol.

My own personal preference is for Versafine Ink. Usually I use Onyx black, but it is available in quite a lot of different colours and I do occasionally use Vintage Sepia. It's water resistant ink, but stamps clean up with soap and water just fine, as long as you clean them pretty soon after use.

I use a standard size pad in the black, but this ink is available in small cubes also, which makes it quite cheap to try out.

If you are stamping on a textured paper, you will need to apply a bit more pressure than normal. If you own a Misti or something similar that allows positioning of stamps and over stamping, you may want to use this. Otherwise just be careful to press down with a firm even pressure and make sure you apply good pressure on small highly detailed areas.

By the time you've cleaned up your stamp, your image should be dry and ready to go.

If you are using a digi, you will first need to check that the printer your are using is using a waterproof ink of some kind.  Laser printers work very well for this and you can pick up a B & W version pretty inexpensively, that will allow you to print off your images for coluring without having to worry about ink bleed. I have used a Laser printer in the past and had very good results. Currently I'm running with the Epson Workforce

To print out your digi it's quite unlikely that your printer will take an A4 or A5 piece of paper as watercolour papers are quite heavy gauge. So what you will need is to get some low tack masking tape, or you can use stencil tape or washi tape.

First print your chosen image on plain copy paper. Then cut a piece of your chosen paper to slightly bigger all round (a quarter to half an inch.). Position your paper over the printed image and secure on 2 sides with your masking tape. Then run it through the printer Voila! Your paper should have no difficulty being taken up by your printer and your image should print perfectly.

You're now ready to colour your image, which I will colour in forthcoming videos.

Hope this has been helpful. Take care and I'll see you soon! :) xx

Elisabeth Bell - Milly - Little Spring Helper

Well I had an incredibly busy time at work this week and all my plans went slightly awry, so what I planned to make for this week will have to wait another week and instead I have a bit of a quicker make for you using one of the shape art stencils from Dutch Doobadoo. This is the first time I've used one and they're very versatile. I do have to say they would be perfect if you don't have a die cutting machine and I used mine to make a shaped card. It was really rather easy.

I coloured up Milly- Little Spring Helper from Elisabeth Bell at Whimsy Stamps to match these pretty vintage papers.

I coloured her with my Distress Markers using the following colours:
Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Walnut Stain, Frayed Burlap, Victorian Velvet, Bundled Sage and Shabby Shutters.

I think she turned out rather well for a quick make and she really suits the vintage treatment.

I added some lovely butterflies cut with a large butterfly die and 2 smaller co-ordinating ones that come in the Circle with Butterflies die. I finished off with some little pearl beads made with a pearl pen and voila! done and in record time...just in the nick of time for my post today.

The butterfly die looks beautiful when you double it.

The ribbon lace and pink flowers are from The Ribbon Girl, and the Pierced Oval Die and Oval Doily Die are from Dies to Die for

all the following products are from the Noor! Design U.K. Webshop

128-Shape Art A5 Square	0037-With Love Paper Pad	Distress Inks	010-Pearl Pen White	Butterfly
Circle with Butterflies	Kraft Art A5 Leaves	Cheesecloth	Joycraft Artificial Flowers 0070	Dutch Doobadoo Gesso White

That's all from me today, but I hope to be back this weekend with the next in my series of Distress Colouring Tutorials.

Happy crafting! :) xx