Watercoloring Techniques: Watercolor Pencils

March 18, 2011 under Cards, Techniques

Alright, today is the last day of my Watercolor Technique card shares.  At least for now.  But with this last card,  I wanted to show you the 5th technique we are doing in my watercolor technique class.  So without further ado:

Watercoloring with Watercolor Pencils

You may think, “yeah, yeah, I know what it is like to color in an image with colored pencils. I did that back in school.”  But have you seen the magic that is watercolored pencils? Smile The cool thing about watercolor pencils is that you have the control to color in fine details and spaces because you have the fine tip of the pencil.  And coloring with colored pencils is very pretty.  But you are left with pencil stroke marks that maybe you would rather not have.  Simply wave your magic wand (aka Blender pen or Aqua pen) over the places where you colored with the pencil and voila!  You get this beautiful, smooth watercolored look.  Here is an example… though I’m having the hardest time taking a good picture to really show you what I mean.  But in the image below, the flowers are colored using the same colored pencils and amount of coloring.  But the one on the right has been gone over with a blender pen.  You can at least see that the color gets more saturated and maybe see that it has a smoother look.

That said, here is the sample for the card we are making in the class:

Like I said, the pencils are great for detail work.  Especially things like the stamp border and the tiny flower bud.

This technique is so pretty and so easy at the same time.  It was also probably the favorite the last time I ran this class.

Well, I hope you enjoyed checking out some of the different ways to add watercoloring looks to your cards.  This is a good introduction to just the surface of what you can do and I’d love to hear what your favorite techniques are as well!  Leave a comment and let me know how you like to do watercoloring.

Interested in trying these cards & techniques out yourself?

In Person
Do to multiple requests, I’m running my class again on March 28th in the Mountain View, CA area.  I’d love to have you join us. Check out the full details on my meetup site.

Online
Or, if you are not local, purchase the supplies for these techniques from my online store and send me an email.  I’ll send you written tutorial instructions for these cards for FREE!  Not sure what you need, email me at jennifer@nwstamper.com and I’ll send you a basic supply list and you can see what you have in your stash and what you would still need.

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Watercoloring Techniques: Chalks and Markers

March 16, 2011 under Cards, Techniques

If you saw my last post, I started sharing some of the cards we are doing in my watercolor technique class (if you haven’t seen it, check it out here).  These cards are meant as a way to introduce you to some of the different ways you can play with watercolor styles.  So, last time was Inks and Watercolor Crayons; and so today is Chalks/Pastels and Markers.  If you have any questions, leave me a comment or send me a note and I’d be happy to help you out.

Watercoloring with Chalks

Stampin’ Pastels are the chalks offered by Stampin’ Up! and they used to come by default in your Stampin’ Up! starter kit.  So, I had a big set for ages but kept forgetting to pull it out.  But that is when a class like this is great, it reminded me of the different ways you can use your chalks, including watercoloring.  In this example, we did one of the easiest methods which is just to pick up the chalk using a blender pen and then coloring your image.  The nice thing with this method is that you can get a rich color without it being as streaky or dark like you might with a marker.  The difference is that you are essentially picking up the physical chalk with the pen and smoothing that out on your image as opposed to just having some of the ink pigment soaking into the tip of your pen like when you are using inks.

**If you are interested in chalks, there is a set in the Clearance Rack for a steal!  Its while supplies last so snag it while you can! **

This is only one of the ways to use chalks.  I have a blog post on other technique ideas for using your Stampin’ Pastels – check out more Pastel Techniques here.

Watercoloring with Markers

So, this is a technique I LOVE because it is sooo easy and turns out beautifully.  For this technique, all you are doing is using the Stampin’ Write markers to outline a stamped line art image.  Then pull the color from the outline to wherever you want there to be color fill.  So, in the image below, I outlined the flower head in Rich Razzleberry marker and then used a blender pen to pull the Razzleberry color to fill out the petals.  You want to use the brush head of the marker when drawing your outline so there is enough ink on the paper to blend around.  Also, this technique really works well if your marker is a dye based ink.

You can also use your markers to do watercoloring in other ways including using the marker to color onto a clear block, ink pad lid, etc and then picking up the color with your blender pen.  The one thing you do not want to do is to try to pick up the color off the tip of the marker using your blender pen.  If you do this, you may start diluting the color in your marker because you can have some of the water or alcohol base in your blender pen soak into the marker tip when you are trying to pull off color, which is no good.

Card 5
I’ll be back to post the last card at the end of the week.  Hope you stop back by to see!

Interested in trying these cards & techniques out yourself?

In Person
Do to multiple requests, I’m running my class again on March 28th in the Mountain View, CA area.  I’d love to have you join us. Check out the full details on my meetup site.

Online
Or, if you are not local, purchase the supplies for these techniques from my online store and send me an email.  I’ll send you written tutorial instructions for these cards for FREE!  Not sure what you need, email me at jennifer@nwstamper.com and I’ll send you a basic supply list and you can see what you have in your stash and what you would still need.

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Watercoloring Techniques: Inks and Watercolor Crayons

March 14, 2011 under Cards, Techniques

Each month I run at least one technique class to give folks a chance to try something different or learn new ways to use something they might already have.  Well, a recently ran my popular watercoloring technique night during which we made 5 cards, each using a different method for watercoloring.  It was so much fun to create the cards and even more fun to see the different ways people used the techniques on their cards.  This week, I thought I would share some of the cards we did at this class.

Watercoloring with Inks

This is your basic watercoloring technique that most people, if they have only done watercoloring one way with stamping, it is this method.  To do this technique, you want to squeeze your ink pad so that some of the ink gets deposited onto the inside of the lid of your stamp pad.  Once you open your ink pad, you will see the ink deposited on the lid and you can lift it off with a blender pen or aqua pen.  Then use your pen like it was a marker to color your card.  In this case, we did a sweet Build-a-Bear cheery card.

Watercoloring with Watercolor Crayons

Next we did a card using the hostess set – Because I Care and the Watercolor Crayons.  Now, this is a medium that I often completely forget about but there is so many cool things you can do with watercolor crayons.  I won’t go into all of them today because that would make this post way to long but if there is interest, I can highlight them another day.

Anyway, for this card we did a technique I haven’t done in a long time.  We used the crayons to color directly onto the stamp rubber – placing all of our colors on the image at the same time.  Then you spritz your rubber with water and stamp.  The water you spray on the rubber interacts with the wax of the watercolor crayons to create the more classic watercolor look.

I just had to show you too the other thing we did with the card that was just for fun and I guess thinking back on it now, was a theme with this card: spritzing things.

We used the gold Smooch Spritz to add gold shimmer to the background So Saffron paper.  Its fairly tone on tone but is sooo pretty in person.  Here is an attempt at a photo to show you what I mean.

Cards 3-5
Check back later this week as I post the other cards we created in this class.

 

Interested in trying these cards & techniques out yourself?

In Person
Do to multiple requests, I’m running my class again on March 28th in the Mountain View, CA area.  I’d love to have you join us. Check out the full details on my meetup site.

Online
Or, if you are not local, purchase the supplies for these techniques from my online store and send me an email.  I’ll send you written tutorial instructions for these cards for FREE!  Not sure what you need, email me at jennifer@nwstamper.com and I’ll send you a basic supply list and you can see what you have in your stash and what you would still need.

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More Fun Ideas for Crystal Effects

November 18, 2010 under Cards, classes, Techniques

Each month I hold a technique night focusing on some different product or crafting technique.  Well, this last Tuesday night we focused on Crystal Effects.  I think Crystal Effects is one of those products that I often forget on the shelf but when I pull it out and start playing around I have so much fun!  I took this evening to show some of the different ways you can use Crystal Effects starting with the simple:

Hello card In this case, we stamped the card and then added Crystal Effects over the butterfly image to create a fun 3D effect:

CE close up Similar to this idea, we also made some chipboard accents to use on a future project.  This was the thrifty person (aka hoarder) in me.  I saved the white cardboard piece that comes with our designer paper packages.  We adhered some DSP to the cardboard and then punched out a heart using the Small Heart punch.  Then we punched that out using a 1” Circle punch and also punched out a 1” circle of Poppy Parade cardstock.  Glue the Poppy Parade piece to the back of your chipboard and then fill in the cutout with Crystal Effects.  Its a fun way to make custom epoxy-like accents.

Epoxy AccentsNext, we added some sparkle to the place… cause who doesn’t like glitter with your pizza?  :)    (We were meeting at Round Table Pizza and only got a little bit of glitter on the table)  Coat the top of the brad with Crystal Effects and dip into some fine glitter to create your glitter brads.

glitter bradsNow, I will warn you, unlike our Glimmer Brads in the Holiday Mini, the glitter will tend to rub off a bit with these brads.  You want to shake off what you can when you first glitter them up and then be prepared for a little to flake off after its dried.  I think it is pretty enough to be worth it.  Oh, and when you are letting your brads dry after dipping them, just set them gently on the table with the prongs pointing up.  It won’t mess up your brads and then you can have your hands free to do other stuff while it dries.

We also used Crystal Effects as glue on the back of the clear Itty Bitty Buttons, using the matching Punch Pack to punch out paper in the same shape as the button.  I made this card a while back and used it as my sample.  But it shows you basically what we did.

friends forever buttons close up buttonsFinally, our last fun technique was the Stained Glass technique.  I love using this stamp set for this technique.  If you want to see details on how to do it, check out my post from last year.  But here is the card we made:

stained glass treeAnd yes, my tree ended up a little “artistic”. :)  I was showing how to color and paint on the Crystal Effects and when showing how you would attach the window sheet to the Whisper White paper once the Crystal Effects was dry, I accidentally put them together.  So, I now call it artistic shading.

It was a fun night and I loved seeing the creativity in the room.

Thanks for taking the time to view the projects we made.  I’d love to hear what your favorite use is for Crystal Effects.  Leave a comment sharing what tips and techniques you use, I’d love to hear from you!

In the San Francisco area? I’d love to show you and your friends how to make these projects!  Contact me at jennifer@nwstamper.com to learn how you can get a free private class for you and your friends!

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Just Believe Easel Card

October 14, 2010 under Cards, Techniques

Here is the last of the three fancy fold cards we made this week.  This final card was my first ever easel card.  I had seen lots of folks making them but never took the time to figure them out until this class motivated me to create one.  I started out thinking I wanted to make the card in Elegant Eggplant and that I wanted to use a Wheel stamp.  From there I picked the Just Believe stamp set since it match my Always In Bloom wheel and continued building and embellishing until I got to this:

butterfly easel card (530x800)

Now if you aren’t familiar with an Easel card, this type of card is called Easel because the base of the card acts as a stand so that you can have the card front permenantly popped up and on display if you want.  Here is a side view:

butterfly easel card side (780x800)

The nice thing is that the card lies flat for mailing.  Here are the steps to create this card:

  1. Cut a piece of cardstock to 4 1/4” x 11” for the card base. 
  2. Then cut a second piece of the base color cardstock at 4 1/4” x 5 1/2” for your card front.
  3. Score the 4 1/4” x 11 paper at 5 1/2” and 8 1/4”.  Fold the card in half at the 5 1/2” score line (like a typical card fold) and then fold the cardstock in the opposite direction at the 8 1/4” fold.  So you end up with the cardstock looking like a zigzag pattern when looking at it from the side. 
  4. Adhere the 4 1/4” x 5 1/2” card front piece to the smaller scored end of the paper so that when you fold the card flat, your card front completely covers your card base.
  5. Embellish your card as desired being sure to add some embellishment or paper layers to the inside of the card base to help “catch and hold” the card front when you open the card.  In the example above I used the Rose Red cardstock with the white stamped layer.

Tip:  If you are using cardstock layers, you may want to curl/distress the edges so that there is more cardstock sticking up to catch the card front

Tip:  When wrapping ribbon around a card front, especially closer to the open end of the card, use a bit of adhesive to tack down the center of the ribbon to the inside of your card front.  That keeps the ribbon from sliding when you are tying it as well as keeps it from sliding off the card entirely during handling. :)

Just Believe Easel Card Recipe
Stamps:  Just Believe, Always in Bloom wheel stamp
Ink:  Old Olive, Rose Red, Elegant Eggplant
Paper:  Elegant Eggplant CS, Rose Red CS, Whisper White CS, Blushing Bride hostess dsp
Accessories:  Whisper White taffeta ribbon, self adhesive Rhinestones, Snail adhesive, Glue dots, Butterfly punch

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Autumn Spice Gate Fold Card

October 13, 2010 under Cards, Techniques

Today I wanted to share with you another card we made on our technique night.  For this card, we used the Gate Fold style.  This style can be implemented in a various designs but the most common is the version we used below where you take a standard sized card but score your paper to enable the front to open at a split in the middle.

IMG_4935 (647x800)To make this card, you want to cut a piece of paper your standard 5 1/2” x 8 1/2”.  Then score the paper at  2 1/8” and 6 3/8”.  This will give you the Gate fold and you can then embellish the card front as you desire. 

IMG_4937 (643x800)

Typically folks will create some cardstock or embellishment piece that overlaps both of the front flaps.  Adhere this element to one front flap.  Then on the other flap, adhere a punched piece or 3d element that will overlap the corner of your center piece to help hold the card closed.  In this case, I used an Old Olive button and positioned a glue dot on the lower right of the button back.  This allows me to slide the Cajun Craze paper behind the button.  

Hope you enjoyed this card!

Autumn Spice Gate Fold recipe:
Stamps:  Occasional Quotes
Paper:  Always Artichoke CS, Very Vanilla CS, Cajun Craze CS, Early Espresso CS, Autumn Spice dsp
Ink:  Cajun Craze
Accessories:  2 3/8” scallop circle punch, Corner rounder punch, Ticket Corner punch, Bold Brights buttons (old olive), Glue dots

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Thanks Joy Fold Card

October 11, 2010 under Cards, Techniques

Tonight was another fun technique night with my meetup group and we spent the night creating three different “fancy fold” cards.  Specifically, we made a Joy Fold card, a Gate Fold card, and an Easel card.  Here is the first card we created -

IMG_1563 (3) (800x568)

This is a Joy Fold card.   That means, instead of the typical folded in half card, you use two pieces of card stock to create your fold.  Here is what it looks like when open:

IMG_1562 (800x779)

This is actually a very easy card to create.  Here are the dimensions to create this card yourself:

  1. Cut your base cardstock (in my card it is Poppy Parade) 4 1/4” x 8 1/2”.  Score at 5 1/2”.
  2. Cut one piece of DSP at 4” x 5 1/4” (the Greenhouse Gala blue flower paper above)
  3. Cut a second piece of DSP at 4” x 2 3/4” (the Greenhouse Gala green flower paper above)
  4. Cut your inner cardstock piece at 3” x 8” (I used Daffodil Delight).  Score at 4”.
  5. Adhere your DSP, then position the base cardstock piece in the center of your large DSP.
  6. Decorate your inner cardstock as you wish.  We stamped the ala carte So Many Thanks stamp on a piece of Whisper White paper and then sponged the edge with Daffodil Delight.
  7. Use a punched or cut element to hold down the corner of your inner cardstock on the outside flap.  I used dimensionals on the heart from the Heart to Heart punch out to make a pocket for the corner of the cardstock to fit into.

These are fun cards to create and gives you a chance to be creative as you play with color combinations of cardstock and different designer paper patterns.  What are your favorite combinations?

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Tons of Tools Card and Embellished Envelope

September 29, 2010 under Cards, Techniques

Sunday was this month’s Technique Night with my meetup group and by request, I did a night that was focused on going over many of the tools you might encounter on your crafting journey including:

  • The BigShot
  • Aqua and Blender pens for water coloring
  • Crimpers
  • Bone Folders
  • Paper Piercing tools
  • Heat and Dry Embossing
  • the Crop-a-Dile for eyelet setting and hole punching
  • the Stamp-a-ma-jig for exact stamp image placement
  • Color spritzers
  • And paper punches

So, we ended up using all of these tools on the following two projects.

First we used a Whisper White envelope (since it uses the same type of paper as Whisper White CS, these envelopes take ink and stamping really well!) Trim off 1 1/4” from one of the short sides of the envelope.  Then we used the scallop edge punch on the smaller piece.  For the larger piece, we stamped and used the color spritzer to scatter Soft Suede ink on both sides of the envelope.  Then we ran the big piece through the crimper.  Watercolor the stamped image using the covers of classic ink pads and a watercolor pen, add a punched out scallop square, and adhere and you are pretty much done.  We punched two holes through both the top and bottom pieces of the envelope so we could run ribbon through to tie the envelope closed.

Next we made this card:

This card used the BigShot for making the dots on the white paper.  Then we used the brayer to lightly go over the dots to give them some color.  We did dry embossing on the Rich Razzleberry CS using some holes I punched out some Chipboard with the Simple Alphabet Dies for the BigShot.  We stamped the flower image from the Vintage Vogue stamp set, used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to place the text below the flower and then heat embossed using black embossing powder (don’t forget to use the embossing buddy to ensure you don’t get stray embossing powder flecks!).  Used the crop-a-dile to set the jumbo eyelet; and then finally used the super, awesome mat pack and paper piercer to punch the row of holes below the Rich Razzleberry CS.  Oh, and we used the bone folder and the groove in the paper cutter to score the card so we had a nice crisp fold.

Whew!  That’s a lot of tools, but it was lots of fun.

If you are interested in any of the tools used for these projects, you can get them now through my online store .  Plus –  if your total is $25 or more you will be entered into my drawing for a $50 gift certificate!

My favorite tools are the BigShot and the Mat Pack.  What are yours?

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Experimenting with the Stampin’ Up! Letterpress Dies

September 21, 2010 under Big Shot, Cards, Techniques

As I mentioned last week, I received the new Letterpress Dies and made my first card using the method recommended on the packaging.  However, I’m not always good with rules and recommendations and so I had to start experimenting myself with how these dies worked with different inks, paper, and BigShot “sandwich” combinations.

I wanted to share my results with you so you could try some of these ideas out yourself or avoid the methods that didn’t work so well.

But first – a new sample using the bigger Trick or Treat letterpress die:

The green ribbon in the Pumpkin Pie button is actually the 1/4” Old Olive grosgrain ribbon cut in half.  If you do this to thread through a button, I highly recommend using a needle to thread it through the holes.  I was using the “wet the end of the ribbon, twist, squint, shove, and hope enough gets through to grab with your fingernails” technique.  Lets just say the ribbon frays much more easily that way.

Experimenting with Paper, Ink, and BigShot techniques

Click Read More to see my experiments with the Letterpress dies including photos for the different papers, inks, and techniques I used. Click here to read more.. »

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Sponging up a No Layer Card

September 19, 2010 under Cards, Techniques

Each week, the Late Night Stampers group has some kind of challenge.  This week was particularly intriguing to me as the challenge was to create a single/no layer card.  When I first read this, I thought, “won’t these cards be boring?”  Well, boy was I wrong!  Folks came up with all kinds of cool ways to make a card look interesting without needing lots of layers of paper and embellishments.  So, I took up the challenge and decided to create one myself, no paper layers, no embellishment layers, just paper and ink.

Here is what I came up with:

Using scoring lines and sponging, this card turned out much better than I expected.  I scored the outer frame at about 1” in from the top and the bottom of the card and about 1/2” in from the sides of the card.  Then I scored the inner frame about 1/4” in from the outer frame.  I then masked at the inner frame lines and sponged with Pink Pirouette ink and stamped my flowers using Blushing Bride and Rich Razzleberry.  Next I masked the inner part of the score lines so I could sponge the outer areas with Pink Pirouette and finished it off by sponging the edges of the card in Rich Razzleberry.

Tip:  Did you know that it is easy to score at precise measurements that don’t go to the edge of your paper using a paper cutter and a bone folder?  For a frame like I created above, grab a paper cutter that uses a grooved track for cutting like this one and position your paper to the dimension you want to score.  So, if you were scoring the sides of the frame above, you would put your paper at 3 3/4” so that you are scoring 1/2” in from the side of your 4 1/4” card front.  Then use the bone folder instead of the cutting blade and use the ruler on the cutting track to help you score the length you want – so in this case, from 4 1/2” to 1”.  Keep doing that for each side of your frame, and voila!  You are done!

Need a bone folder or a grooved paper cutter?  You can order them here!

No Layer Card Recipe:
Stamps:  Petal Pizazz, Just Believe
Ink:  Pink Pirouette, Blushing Bride, Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive
Paper:  Whisper White CS
Accessories:  Paper cutter, bone folder, sponges

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