An Experiment with Spritzing Proves the Rule

Okay, so it's time to come clear on the subject of spritzing. I love inking up a stamp, spritzing it with water, and seeing a lovely watercolor effect with absolutely no skill or artistic ability on my part.

Pump, pump the spritzer bottle, and MAGIC!

For years, however, Hero Arts inks have disappointed me with this technique.

The results have been blotchy and speckled and diseased-looking rather than pretty and blendy and watery. I'm not sure what it is about these inks. They are permanent dye inks, like Memento, but while Memento inks respond well to spritzing, Hero Arts inks simply don't. At least for me.

Which leads us to today's card, which uses Hero Arts autumn leaves ombre ink with some very old wood-mounted Hero Arts skeleton leaf stamps.

The first thing you might notice is how the maple leaf stamp appears more solid and a bit more watercolored, at least on its top half. The other leaf stamp has a stronger skeleton effect. As you can see, spritzing doesn't result in much blending of the inks on a skeleton stamp. You can see three clear lines on the top right image. I assure you I dabbed the stamp on the pad repeatedly to try to blend the colors. Those lines will blur as I get more use from the ombre ink pad...this was its first use.

Check out the close-up below, and if you can enlarge it on your screen, please do. You'll notice that the inks on both images appear blotchy, as if the pigments clumped together on the stamps. The top half of the maple leaf doesn't look too bad, but the bottom half looks sort of diseased. This has been my experience with all the Hero Arts dye inks for a very long time.

Now, given its diseased look, it's strange that I really like this card. At least most of the leaves look mottled, which makes the effect look more deliberate than accidental. The color blending will get better over time, so that doesn't concern me, either. In real life, autumn leaves are disintegrating anyway, so to me, the look doesn't come off as too unnatural.

This proves the rule, however, that we stampers simply cannot have too many different inks.

The Hero Arts ombre inks aren't ideal for spritzing, and while Memento inks do work great with spritzing, they don't come in spectrum pads. The Kaleidacolor spectrum pad inks generally work great with water.

My previous two posts prove that Hero Arts ombre inks can produce delightful results as well, and so they, too, have value, even if not so much for watercolor effects.

So we NEED Kaleidacolor and Hero Arts ombre inks both. Right?

I can justify any new purchase with enough twisted logic. It's a gift.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts leaves, Papertrey sentiment
ink: Hero Arts ombre ink autumn leaves
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, water spritz bottle

Festive Gradient Sentiment

While experimenting with my Hero Arts ombre inks, I decided to use the red gradient for a Christmas sentiment. Since the sentiment is so wide, I opted for a 6.25" by 3.5" card.

The breathing room created by the wide, low card worked perfectly.

Coordinating envelope from Marco's because life's too short
to make envelopes.

This blessings sentiment from Hero Arts is so versatile. There are other words to go with it to fit all sorts of occasions, so it's not a set that stores conveniently in any one category. But I've always been a sucker for Christmas blessings sentiments, so I had to have it. You'll see me use the coordinating die on a non-Christmas card coming up. Some sets make me extremely happy. This is one of them.

And some ink pads make me extremely happy. The ombre pads certainly do.

It bothers me that I can't put the accent on ombre. Sadly, my laptop keyboard number key pad has a malfunctioning zero key, so I have to live accentless.

First-world problems.

I'll focus on that delightful gradient on the sentiment. So festive!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Stamp and Cut Blessings, Papertrey Mistletoe and Holly, random holly for envelope
ink: Hero Arts ombre red, Impress Fresh Ink mojito
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: dimensionals, envelope, red Smooch for berries on envelope

Hero Arts Ombre Inks...I'm Lovin' Them

Before we get to the ombre inks, let's talk about yesterday's post. First of all, thanks for your comments and emails! They proved my point because opinions were all over the place. That's awesome!

I was, however, shocked that so many of you objected to the red sentiment. It never even occurred to me to change the red because I liked the font in red so much. The energy of it worked for me, and I wanted some contrast to the serene blues for added interest, and as it's a Christmas card, red made sense to me. Plus, the red and green seemed the perfect Christmas pairing on the second card. Clearly, I was in the minority on liking the red sentiment!

I do totally agree with several of you that the harmony of the blue card would be enhanced by a black sentiment.

Those little present dies are too cute to stop playing with; I may well revisit that design and do some of the tinkering you suggested. I'd like to do some shading on the boxes or some ombre effect with the Copics as well. Thanks so much for sharing your opinions.  That was fun!

Now, for the Hero Arts ombre inks.

Here's my selection of the inks. And if you're thinking that one upside-down pad doesn't bother me, you haven't been reading Simplicity for very long, now, have you? Ugh. But things around here have been pretty crazy lately, and letting little mistakes slide is therapeutic, Right?

If I keep saying that out loud, maybe I'll believe it.

One day.

Eventually.

Anyway, these inks are a lot of fun, but they do have some limitations, and not all my experiments have turned out like I wanted. I'll share several of them over the next few days, so you can see how these inks work for me. If you've experimented with them and have different results, I'd love to hear what you have to say about them.

To blend ink on these spectrum pads, press your stamp into the pad repeatedly, making slight adjustments up or down so the edges between the colors blend and blur. The more you use these pads, the better: ink will transfer to the the adjacent colors and soften the lines between them for future inking. In essence, these pads are good for overcoming the obsessive neat freak in me. The messier they are, the better they work.

If only my house were like that.

Today's card is my hands-down favorite of the recent batch of cards I made using these inks. All that blue makes me so very happy.

To make the card, I repeatedly stamped a branch from Papertrey's Turning a New Leaf set (a classic I will never part with!). Each image was made with a freshly cleaned and inked stamp since I had to keep rotating the stamp to fill the panel. That indigo blue on the bottom was so vivid that the vellum was perfect for the sentiment...the ink shines through beautifully.

The bling darkens on the way down as well.

I attached the vellum by folding it around the edges of the panel and adhering it on the back. That way, it floats above the background in a dreamy sort of way. Then, the panel was attached to craft foam for a bit of dimension. Just lovely!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Turning a New Leaf, Keep It Simple Thinking of You
paper: Papertrey white, vellum
ink: Hero Arts ombre sky to indigo, Archival black
accessories: rhinestones, tape runner (for adhering the vellum to the back of the panel), craft foam, glue

Color Transformation and an Informal Poll

Today's pair of cards shows just how powerful color choices can be.

First up, I made this card using a coordinating die for the Hero Arts Christmas List set and my favorite colors of Copic markers. It's a nice card, but a little issue niggled at my design sense.

Note how loose and fun the sentiment is. That font isn't serene and soft...like the color scheme of the presents. The niggle came from a slight misfit of color, so I brightened things up with four happy, fun shades of green tending toward yellow.

The fun, bright colors fit with the sentiment perfectly now!

So why do I still like the first card better? Well, I love the energy of the lime and apple greens, but those serene blues fill my heart with peace. I crave calm and serenity in a busy, high-energy world.

May I remind you I live with two teenage boys? Oh, yeah. I crave calm. 

I think it would be fun to hear your input on this. Color has a powerful pull on our emotions, Few people are neutral in their opinions about colors. (May I remind you of StampinUp's orchid opulence, or as I like to call it, fairy vomit?)

So which of the two color schemes appeals to you most? Why? What other color scheme would you like to see with this design? (The theme is Christmas, of course, but I enjoy non-traditional color schemes!)

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Christmas List
ink: Memento black, Archival red geranium
paper: Papertrey white; StampinUp Baja breeze; random lime green
accessories: die, dimensionals, Copic markers

Sometimes a Thing Doesn't Work; Sometimes a Slightly Different Thing Does

While poking around on Pinterest, I saw several cards with gold embossing and watercolor, and felt inspired.

Sometimes, a thing doesn't work. 

Note how this gold-embossed image appears blotchy, messy, unkempt. The addition of watercolor did not help. It dried rather anemic looking. Urgh.

Sometimes, a slightly different thing does work.

After seeing how the natural, shaded holly stamp didn't work with the gold embossing, I flexed to a different set with cleaner images and a larger sentiment. Much better!

I've never figured out how to get perfectly smooth embossing, as both cards show. But this one at least looks tidy and allows the watercolor variations in shading to enhance the flowers. Those gold half-beads help, too.

If one thing doesn't work, try a slightly different thing.

You might score!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
Fail Card
stamps: Hero Arts
ink: VersaMark
paper: watercolor paper, Papertrey white
accessories: Peerless Watercolors, brush, extra fine gold embossing powder, Embossing Buddy, heat gun

Win Card
stamps: Simon Says Stamp For to Us
ink: VersaMark
paper: watercolor paper, Papertrey white
accessories: Peerless Watercolors, brush, extra fine gold embossing powder, Embossing Buddy, heat gun, Prisma gold metallic marker, ruler, gold half-beads

Simplicity with Die Cut

While not all my experiments with my new dies have yielded successful cards, today's card is one of my favorites, if only because it's so very, very simple.

card size 4 7/8" x 3.5"
standard small envelope from Marco's paper

At first, I tried the die cut of mistletoe on a standard A2 card, but it looked a little lost on all that white space. The scale worked perfectly on this smaller card.

To color the image, which is stamped in black, I pulled out my PrismaColor pencils. The berries are accented with Wink of Stella though it's hard to see in the photo. I stamped the image again on the envelope but left it uncolored there. To see the good stuff, you've got to open the envelope!

The Wink of Stella on the berries is very sparkly in real life!

That little satin bow took a while to figure out. I tried natural twine, red DMC floss, white embroidery floss, red satin, and finally white satin. The white satin reinforced the white berries with its color and its shimmer.

If anyone says simple cards are easy, whack them on the head with a skein of embroidery thread. 

A large skein.

Reader merryf asked me about my envelope line stamp. It's from Simon Says Stamp Envelope Sentiments. I keep it permanently on my craft desk, mounted on an old acrylic block I don't like (edges are too sharp for frequent use). I decorate coordinating envelopes more often having that stamp ready at hand.

Mercy, grace, peace, love, and simplicity,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Vintage Christmas Post
ink: Archival black
paper: Papertrey
accessories: die, PrismaColor pencils, dimensionals, satin ribbon, glue

An Unexpected Break

It's been a heck of a week. I'm fine but exhausted and very much in need of a break.

Back next week, hopefully refreshed and with some fun new cards to share.

In the meantime, here are a couple of dog pictures to make you smile.

Sorry this one is a little out of focus. It's hard
to shoot a constantly moving target!

Daisy is more dignified and focused, LOL!