Beautiful Arteza Color and a Die

Last week, I posted this card, which shows what the Arteza real brush pens look like when used to color an image directly without addition of water. Today's card shows how these beautifully rich colors can be used to create a background that can be die cut for truly high-impact clean-and-simple designs.

To make this card, I colored a scrap of watercolor paper with the dark pink and purple Arteza pens, blending the two colors together. Then, I cut the sentiment using the Blessings die from Hero Arts. The rest of the card is self-explanatory.

What I love here is how those rich colors pop right off all that white cardstock. There's so much impact here! And the texture of the watercolor paper adds just a little something as well.

So don't think that backgrounds have to be used in big ways in designs. You can keep things simple by using only a small amount of colorful background...and plenty of white space!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Blessings
ink: Archival black
paper: watercolor paper, Papertrey white card stock
accessories: coordinating die, rhinestones, Copics to color the rhinestones

Why We Need to Condition Some Photopolymer Stamps

So I'll show you the POST-conditioning card first, since many of you don't scroll down, and I don't want anyone to think I'd post the PRE-conditioning card as my card for the day...it's that bad. For directions on conditioning stamps, please scroll to the bottom.

So here's what conditioned stamps look like when stamped.

Aren't they pretty? Perfect images! Those inks are a combination of Hero Arts and Archival dye inks, and the colors look so pretty and autumnal.

BTW, this is a birthday card for a male relative with a fall birthday. I've actually finished all the birthday cards for my family for 2018. Yay, me!

So for those of you new to stamping or perhaps not familiar with photopolymer stamps, there's a highly annoying fact about them. The manufacturing process often leaves a residue on them that repels ink, causing it to bead up on the stamp and gives a very, very icky impression, especially on solid, block-style stamps like these leaves. In fact, the impressions will look like this:

At first, I thought, "Well, perhaps this card will just look distressed and perhaps more masculine."

But if you have to use "perhaps" twice in one sentence, the odds are against you. It just looks poorly stamped.

Other than the green leaf and the veins on the pumpkin pie leaf, I left all colors the same on my "good" version of the card. The green on the original was too dark, so I lightened it up for the final card. And the terra cotta veins didn't provide enough contrast with the pumpkin so I switched to coffee.

I'm making a substandard card worked to my advantage here because it allowed me to fix the colors. So yay, again!

Now, this set (Leave It Be) from Papertrey is lovely, with a coordinating die set. The dies aren't open dies, so I cut first, then stamped. I prefer open dies, which can be stamped first, then cut. But whatever. The final card made my CAS-lovin' heart go pitter patter. And I know I'll be making more cards for fall with this set.

How to Condition Photopolymer Stamps

To remove the residue from photopolymer stamps, follow these simple steps.

1. Take a white eraser and rub the stamps as hard as you can.

2. Wipe the stamps on a damp cloth to brush off as much of the eraser residue as you can.

3. Clean the stamps with a good stamp cleaner, like Hero Arts ultra clean. That will remove everything.

4. Ink and stamp happy!


Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Leave It Be, Birthday Basics
ink: Hero Arts butter bar, soft apricot, just rust, forever green; Archival coffee, sienna, fern green; Papertrey terra cotta tile
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: coordinating dies, glue, dimensionals

Birthday with Materialized Color on the 49th Vibration

If you've never seen the movie A Mighty Wind, fix that ASAP. It's a hysterical mockumentary of folk musicians that has so many good quotations in it.

At one point, a character named Terry Bohner shares his understanding of his wacky religion:

This is not an occult science. This is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology. That stuff's hooey, and you've got to have a screw loose to go in for that sort of thing. Our beliefs are fairly commonplace and simple to understand. Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.

Today's card reminded me of that scene. This card is materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. 

These colors come from a Kaleidacolor pad called Spectrum. The purple didn't photograph well, although it looks great in real life. That green, however, is my favorite color...so bright and happy and alive! It contrasts perfectly with the dark purple and blue for an awesome feel of energy and good wishes!

This card is perfectly flat...no bling or dimensional elements at all. But it has fabulous color, clean design, and lots of movement and energy. If you can get those elements right, dimension becomes unnecessary. 

And I leave you with this almost poetic quote from folk hero (and heavily medicated) Mitch Cohen in A Mighty Wind:

I feel ready for whatever the experience is that we will... take with us after the show. I'm sure it will be... an adventure... a voyage on this... magnificent vessel... into unchartered waters! What if we see sailfish... jumping... and flying across the magnificent orb of a setting sun?

Watch the movie. Mitch is hysterical. 

Mercy, grace, peace, love, and much-needed comedy,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Good Times
ink: Kaleidacolor spectrum
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: none

An Appropriately Cold Card

Y'all, this southern belle living in Ohio is freezing her tee-hiney off. School is cancelled in our area for tomorrow because the wind chills will be below -20F.

And of course, we're training Cooper to the invisible fence right now, with arctic temperatures and four inches of snow on the ground.

Figures.

Being back in the South wouldn't do me any good now, though. Snow and frigid temps all up and down the East Coast. Southerns are not equipped to handle snow or frigidity. 

Funny true story. When I was a teenager living in Charlotte, NC, we had next-door-neighbors who moved down from Boston. We got a few inches of snow and were out playing because school was cancelled and mom didn't have to go to work. We noticed the neighbors shoveling their driveway. My mom wandered over and asked what they were doing. "We have to shovel the snow," the man said. Mom replied, "You do realize it will all be gone by this afternoon, right?"

They kept shoveling. The snow was gone by 4:00 pm. Those crazy Yankees.

Now, I am one of them. The white stuff doesn't disappear so quickly in Ohio, so we have to shovel or use the snowblower. (Yes, we have a snowblower because our driveway is very, very long.) But the roads are cleared ever so much quicker, and there's no need to stock up on necessities because you can get to the store within a day.

Stay safe out there, everyone.

Any-who. Today's birthday card will go to my elder son late this year. He LOVES winter and says he wants to move to Alaska. So I made his birthday card with appropriate imagery and colors (or non-colors, as it were).

At first, I just had the sentiment and buck on the card, with the silver swooshy snowbank. But it looked too plain, so I pulled out a little snow stamp from PTI's In the Meadow set and created a swoosh of snow, too, using Mama Elephant moonlight pigment ink, which is very, very light.

I love the movement the snow adds to the card, especially with the bling for sparkle!

To make the snowbank, I cut a scrap of cardstock with a craft knife and then edged it with a PrismaColor silver metallic marker. The marker tip is really fat and holds to the edge of the paper well. The whole snow bank is popped up with craft foam for a bit of dimension that doesn't really show in the photos.

Before assembling the card, I noticed the proportions were a bit off, with too much white space at the bottom. Trimming the bottom of the card and snowbank about half an inch fixed it perfectly.

Mercy, grace, peace, love, and central heat,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey In the Meadow (snow), Masculine Motifs (buck), Out on a Limb (sentiment)
ink: Hero Arts soft granite, Mama Elephant moonlight
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, craft foam, craft knife, PrismaColor metallic marker

Bright Summer Flowers on a Cold Winter Day

Note: I've got some tips on making "paint splat" cards below, so scroll down if you're interested.


I hope all my U.S. readers are staying warm. Yesterday, every state in the CONUS recorded temperatures below freezing, so even our southern states are shivering. We in southwest Ohio might have a school delay for wind chill tomorrow and Friday mornings. Brrrr.

So here's a happy, colorful, summer-y card to cheer us all up!

These cute flowers (Hero Arts by Lia) are colored with Arteza real brush pens directly from the brush, with no water added. These colors are so vivid and happy!

The real brush pens have real brush tips on them...with a very fine point for getting into tight places. 

I just love this little flower set, called Just for You (Hero Arts by Lia Griffith). It's fun and easy to use and cheerful.

Awkward segue.

Now for some tips on making paint splat cards like this one here. Sometimes, such cards end up looking like a messy mess rather than an artful mess. Here are some ideas for skewing the odds toward artful mess.

1. Use a MISTI. It's often hard to get a clean image when stamping such large, solid stamps, and the MISTI allows for multiple inkings-and-stampings of an image until the color is even. The MISTI is brilliant and absolutely worth every penny.

2. You'll get a more harmonious mess if you choose analogous colors--colors next to each other on the color wheel. I chose shades of green and aqua for my recent splat card, and have also used yellow, orange, and pink with happy results.

3. Avoid red paint splats...they look too much like blood splatters from a murder scene. Ewww.

4. Use dye inks. Pigment inks are thick and don't layer attractively.

5. Decide on an area to splat. It's a good idea to stick with splats on about one-third or less of your available space, especially if you're aiming for clean-and-simple cards. This card takes a third out of the middle, with the sentiment centered on the panel as a kind of anchor for all the crazy splats, and this card leaves even more white space to balance a much larger sentiment.

6. As you stamp using the MISTI, fill in almost all the white in the area splatted. You can leave small bits, but larger holes in the splats make it look messier. Designers call those holes "trapped white space," and they muck things up. Just keep stamping until the space is largely filled in while the edges are ragged looking.

7. Try to balance the colors as you go. I sort of use the Force for this...and mostly it works out for good, especially with analogous color schemes.

8. Remember the key rule of stamping: IT'S ONLY PAPER. You can always recycle your pretty trash if you make a mess and try again. So Yoda's advice to "do, or do not" doesn't apply. It's not life or death!

I hope this helps. Happy splatting!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
ink: Archival black
paper: watercolor paper
accessories: Arteza real brush pens, rhinestones

Bad Influences and Light Touches

Following Jennifer McGuire on Facebook is a bad idea. First, she posts all the crafty sales going on, and second, she posts about new products, often with videos that make those new products look amazing and easy and gotta-have-it.

She's a bad influence. And when she posted that Amazon was having a flash sale on the 24-pack of Arteza real brush markers for under $16, of course I bit.

Because Jennifer is a really bad influence, and I'm weak. So weak.

Anyway, here are the markers I got.

And here's one of the first cards I made with them.

Here's proof I'm not the best watercolorist out there, but I love how this turned out anyway. I've always wanted to shade a daisy with gray, and here it is.

I used three different coloring techniques which I'm pretty sure are covered on Jennifer's video. First, I put a touch of color down and tried to "watercolor" the center of the flower, but daisies have bright centers, and the results were just too light. So I laid down quite a bit of color and barely used the aqua brush to spread it around to blend. I love how it pops!

To add the gray shading to the flower, I went back to using a dab of ink from the marker followed immediately by the aqua brush to spread it out. It's very light on purpose (daisies are white!), but the gray marker is darker.

To get the soft blue background, I painted the bright blue marker on an acrylic block and lifted color off it with the aqua brush to apply to the paper. That seriously softens the blue and adds a dreamy effect to the card.

In days to come, I'll show you some more cards with direct coloring that will give you an idea of how intensely colored these markers are. Wow! Great color! And well worth the $16 for the set. 

But for today, we're mostly using a light touch to color my favorite flower, and oh, it makes me happy!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Bugs and Daisy
ink: Archival black
paper: watercolor paper
accessories: Arteza watercolor brush markers, aqua painter

Teen Boy Birthday...Always a Challenge

What do you make for a teenage boy?

No flowers.

Nothing cute.

How about an artsy mess?

I love these lime green and aqua colors together. The combination's harmonious (or hormonious, considering), and the deep black sentiment pops right off of them dramatically (oh, the drama!).

The MISTI made this card possible. Getting all those blotches to stamp evenly is a real challenge, and I was able to restamp each time the results were less than agreeable with the MISTI. What a great invention!

Inside the card is stamped a birthday sentiment. I suspect that, really, what this teen boy will care about is the gift card in the card, not the card itself. But you never know. sometimes, the boys are the ones who care the most about the time you take to show them you love them!

As the mom of two teenage boys, I'm feeling the hormones and drama. Oh, my. Am I feeling it.

*sigh*

What do you do for teenage boys' birthday cards?

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Altenew A Splash of Color
ink: various die inks from Hero Arts, Archival black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: craft foam, glue, MISTI