Poinsettia Die, Part 2 of the Play

Playing is a great way to explore a new purchase, and playing with this poinsettia die from Poppy Stamps makes me very happy.

After using traditional red for the first card I shared using it, I decided to explore a non-traditional option.

Pure white and periwinkle.

If the white space of the first card freaked you out, this version should be more to your taste. The card is smaller (3.25" x 6.5") and utilizes a huge sentiment from Winnie & Walter's The Big, The Bold, The Merry.

In the red version, the poinsettia die took center stage, but here it's definitely supporting cast. That bold merry, with its pretty loops and swishes gets the focus. I adore this card, and not just because periwinkle is one of my favorite colors.

The hint of black in the word Christmas anchors the whole light and pretty design. 

I also pulled out pigment inks for this one. They give a little more weight and opacity to the stamped images, which is important, I think, in such a light design.

Keep in mind the rules of play...have fun and don't worry if you make pretty trash! Sometimes, play works out, and sometimes it doesn't. But if you turn off your inner censor/critic and let creativity happen, you just never know what will happen!

The crazy is ramping up at my house as we get ready to send our elder son to his first year in university, our younger son to tenth grade, and me to work. My time to stamp is predictably limited right now. Once the boys are settled, I will have more time (despite the work) to stamp and will get back to regular posting.

Until then, I will post when I can. Thanks for your patience!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Winnie & Walter The Big, The Bold, The Merry, Hero Arts Holiday Sentiments (poinsettia on envelope), Simon Says Envelope Sentiments
ink: Impress Fresh Ink freesia, Memento Luxe black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, Copic to color them, poinsettia die (Poppy Stamps)

Poinsettia Die, Part 1 of the Play

I picked up a Poppy Stamps layered poinsettia die at Marco's Paper a while back, and decided to play around with it, seeing as I'm not terribly experienced with dies and this is a particularly pretty one.

Here's Part 1 of the Play:

Card Size 3.5" x 7.25"

The poinsettia comes with three layers, but that seemed too much for my CAS-lovin' self, so I used two...one in cherry cobbler and one in real red (both colors by StampinUp). For those of you who like more layers, adding the third smallest layer in the cherry cobbler would be lovely!

The sentiment (Papertrey's Side-by-Side Sentiments) was stamped in Brilliance pearlescent ivy, which is a nice, dark green.

As you can see in the close-up, the dies deboss veins into the leaves. There's also a leaf to go with the poinsettia, but I usually don't like having red and green touching, so I skipped the leaf here. But side by side, red poinsettia and green sentiment, they look festive!

I like to decorate my Christmas card envelopes, so this one is stamped with a Hero Arts poinsettia from Holiday Sentiments. The center of the stamped poinsettia has gold gel pen as an accent since bling on an envelope is impractical. Also, the lines are from Simon Says Stamp's Envelope Sentiments.

There's a LOT of white space on this card, perhaps more than most of you would be comfortable using. That's okay. You could adapt this concept to a much smaller card or even on a gift tag. Simple sentiment, one poinsettia, one bling. Rearrange as needed to please the eye. Easy to mass produce. Striking and pretty!

Everyone wins.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Holiday Sentiments, Papertrey Side-by-Side Sentiments, SSS Envelope Sentiments
ink: Hero Arts red royal, Brilliance ivy
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: standard envelope (Marco's Paper), gold gel pen, rhinestone, Copic for coloring rhinestone

Yay, Me!

My interview went beautifully, and I am now an adjunct instructor at our area's largest community college. I will be teaching two sections of English Composition 1. 

I. Cannot. Wait.

Many, many thanks to all who have sent good wishes and encouragement in this, and for all who have prayed. I've felt it all and am beyond grateful.

Today's card has a bibliophile theme and takes me outside my comfort zone with a colored card base. No matter how hard I tried, the raised panel just wouldn't look good on a cream base. Nuh-uh. Not at all. 

After I'd edited the photo, it occurred to me that the banner with pointy ends really doesn't go very well with the soft deckle of the watercolor paper and the soft edges of the inked background. Wish now I'd used a deckle on one side of the banner. 

Oh, well, this is why we keep stamping. Always striving to improve and "get it right." If we ever do attain perfection, what's the point of going on?

Well, perhaps that's too strong. Yesterday's card was pretty perfect to my eye, LOL!

Anyway, I made the background using an old Hero Arts shadow stamp inked up with peeled paint and faded jeans, spritzed with lots of water, and stamped on watercolor paper. The edges are particularly uneven because I spritzed too much water, but I like the results. The color is nicely intense anyway. 

Books do make me happy. If you like reading novels, may I recommend Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman? It's the best novel I've read in months. 

And I read a lot. 

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,

Susan

Supplies

stamps: Tim Holtz, Clearly Besotted, Hero Arts

ink: Distress faded jeans, peeled paint; Archival potting soil

paper: Papertrey, watercolor paper

accessories: craft foam, rhinestones, Sharpies/Copics for coloring the rhinestones

First-World Problems

It's annoying when you ink up an image, stamp it, and get this.

Hero Arts dye inks tend to smooth out as they dry, but not this time. This stamp and the ink (robin's egg) are from Hero's February 2018 kit. After rubbing the stamp with an eraser, cleaning it well, and re-inking it, this happened.

Grrrr. So I decided to use an Archival ink (cornflower), which is oil based and generally provides perfect coverage, but this happened.

(Note this ink isn't as dark IRL as it looks in the photo.)

Well, isn't that special? (Reread that question in the Church Lady's voice.) I cleaned the stamp again very well, re-inked, and this happened.

Much better.

And here's the final card. (The ink color is accurate on the card but not on the above samples.)

To get a bit of height on the label, I stacked three die cuts together. That gives some lovely--and solid--dimension that won't crush in the mail.

The Hero Arts February 2018 kit is lovely, but that robin's egg ink is finicky. This has happened before. I love the color but wonder if there's something wrong with the formula. The Hero Arts raspberry jam ink looks great on the flowers with no rubbing of the stamp necessary.

Oh, well. Archival cornflower certainly works great!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts February 2018 kit, Papertrey sentiment
ink: Archival cornflower, black; Hero Arts raspberry jam
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: coordinating dies, label die (SSS), rhinestones, black sharpie

Color Layering Extra

Okay, so this card uses the same color-layering set as the past two cards, but this time, I carried color layering to an extra level. Not only are the stamps color layered, but so is the background, which was made by xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssAQZ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````


Well, Daisy helped me blog there. Dog chins are not literate.

Which begs the question: is my chin literate? Things to ponder.

Or not.

Yes, I petted her. She has me well trained.

Anyway, I made the background by lightly inking a scrap with tumbled glass Distress Ink and an inking tool. Then, I placed a stencil over the scrap and added more of the same ink to create the graduated dots.

Subtle and fun layering!

Let me also point out, just for the record, that today's seahorse uses three shades of orange, yesterday's used three shades of aqua, and the first card used three shades of purple. That's nine shades of dye ink...not counting the inks on the shells. If I didn't have so VERY MANY ink pads, using color-layering stamps would be so much harder.

Just sayin'. If you need a reason to buy more ink pads.

I'm helpful that way.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Color Layering Seahorse, Clearly Besotted Tiny Type
paper: Papertrey white
ink: Hero Arts soft vanilla, soft wheat, soft brown; Memento canteloup; Archival tiger lily, potting soil; Distress tumbled glass
accessories: coordinating dies, banner die, dimensionals, stencil, rhinestones

Color Layering, Part 3

It's no secret that I'm a fan of white space and don't care too much if my focal point floats around in that white space. I'm a amateur, not a professional designer, and violating those rules about grounding doesn't keep me up at night.

But when I saw the top left card on this pin, I wanted to experiment with speckles as a way of grounding my fabulous aqua seahorse. Isn't he just darling?

The inspiration card uses more than just speckles, of course, to ground its seahorse-y scene, but I rather like how the speckles look all by themselves. My use of three elements, with the shell and starfish set slightly apart from the seahorse, creates a visual triangle (emphasized by the rhinestones) which allows the small sentiment to stand out a bit more.

The speckles were made using StampinUp's old, old, old Itty Bitty Backgrounds. To get the distribution right, I stamped a few, laid the elements down to see how it looked, picked them back up, stamped some more...and repeated until it looked good.

And there you have it. Another three-step color-layered image that makes me happy. One more seahorse card is coming your way, and then we shall move on to other stuff. Thanks for listening to my struggles with multi-step stamping. It seems that Hero Arts is scaling back on the number of layers in its newer releases, which makes me happy. My limit for future purchases is definitely three layers, with two preferred.

Let's keep things relatively simple, shall we?

As for the job search, Dr. Nancy West, one of my graduate school professors, graciously talked with me today, offering up encouragement and some wonderful advice for Wednesday's interview and for my return to teaching. She definitely made me feel more confident and more centered. I'll keep you posted!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Color Layering Seahorse, sentiment; StampinUp Itty Bitty Backgrounds
ink: Hero Arts soft pool, soft vanilla; Archival black, aquamarine, paradise teal, saffron
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: coordinating dies, rhinestones, dimensionals

Color Layering, Part 2

Before we get to today's card, I have to share the good news! This afternoon, right after I bought "professional" (read "uncomfortable") shoes to wear with an interview outfit, I received an email asking me to come into a college next week to discuss my availability for this upcoming semester! Woohoooooo!

Thanks to all who have prayed or sent good wishes my way on this. Let's hope it all works out. I am so very, very ready to return to teaching composition and literature!

And now to a color-layered image that has THREE stamps to it, which is my upper limit on color layering. Not sure why this Hero Arts seahorse makes me so happy, but it does. Before my MISTI, I struggled with lining up the third layer, but with my MISTI, it's relatively easy to line up.

Inspiration Source

As you may know, I almost never Copy-And-Steal-Everything (CASE) from a source of inspiration, but this card is VERY close to the original, especially in the placement of all the elements, mainly because the original is such a perfectly executed design using the exact same Hero Arts set. My colors are different (though still pastels), and my sentiment is on the card base rather than on a strip over the background paper, but otherwise, it's pretty much the same as Mariana Grigsby's original card.

She used designer paper for her background, but I stamped the wavy lines from Papertrey's Ombre Builders set, which always make me think of water.

Many, many thanks to Mariane for the AWESOME inspiration!


Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Color Layering Seahorse, Papertrey Ombre Builders
ink: Memento angel pink, Lulu lavender; Ancient Page amethyst; Archival black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, Sharpies to color them, dimensionals