Raspberries for Mum

Nat is setting the challenge for us over at Daring Cardmakers and she'd like us to celebrate special women. It might be a card for Mother's Day but equally it could be something to mark a special friendship, an acknowledgement of an inspirational woman or any other way you can dream up to celebrate special women.

I made a card for my mum featuring a favourite fruit. Right from being a little girl we always had raspberries in the garden and once I was old enough to understand that they squash easily I helped Mum with the picking!

Stamps:
Sun Ripened (Stampin' Up! retired)
Happy Stamp n Cut (Hero Arts)

Paper:
Bristol Board

Ink:
Brilliance by Tsukineko (Pearlescent Chocolate)
Adirondack dye ink by Ranger (Stonewashed)

Other:
Copic markers
Coloured pencils
Fine Frames die by Altenew
Rub n Buff by Amaco (Silver Leaf)
Corner Chomper

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Getting to know you

Dawn has set the challenge this week at Daring Cardmakers and she’d like to know a little more about our crafting selves, asking: what is your favourite crafting style or technique? Where do you craft?

I found this quite difficult as I don’t really have a single style or favourite way to do things so I tried to zoom in on a few common denominators!

I  almost always use stamps when I craft and I like to colour in. Floral stamps are a favourite thing to use. I keep telling myself  “no more flowers, you have enough” and then something like this pretty magnolia shows up in a sale and I can’t resist!

Mum has observed in the past that I often go off the edge with images so obviously I had to do that here.

I tend to use minimal layers; even if something is not necessarily a clean and simple design it’s unlikely to involve more than a couple of layers and I’ll often use just a card base, as I have here. I often round a single corner of a card, too.

I really enjoyed using a single die cut word with stamps to complete the sentiment on my Christmas cards this year so I thought I’d try extending that idea to other occasions. This Hero Arts set has lots of options to go with the ‘happy” so hopefully I’ll get plenty of use out of it.

I’m lucky enough to have a room to craft in. On the down side that does mean that it’s often a complete mess because I don’t have to clear up after myself as a I go!


Stamps:
Magnolia by Stampendous
Happy Stamp & Cut by Hero Arts

Paper:
Bristol board 

Ink:
Adirondack dye ink by Ranger (Espresso)

Other:
Copic markers
Wink of Stella pen (clear)
Sequins
Corner Chomper 

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Look Ma - no lines!

I sent my mum some yellow freesias for Mother's Day and thought it would be nice to make a card that tied in with the theme. This lovely freesia stamp is an oldie from Cornish Heritage Farms and I thought I'd try something a bit different with it to see if I could get a genuine-looking watercolour result.

The no-line colouring technique (stamp in a very pale colour and use markers or pencils so that the lines don't show) works well for many stamps but this one is in the style of an etching and has quite a lot of shading lines so I didn't think the technique would work well for a transparent medium like watercolour. Instead, I stamped on scrap paper with black ink and then put the stamped image on a lightbox with a piece of Bristol Board over the top.

For those of us who can't really draw (so faint pencil is out of the question) this provides a great way of getting an image without having an outline that will show. I just left everything in place on the lightbox until I had enough colour on the paper to be confident of the shapes.

I also had a first play with some Kuretake Clean Color pens here. I have one Wink of Stella pen and (perhaps bizarrely since the glitter is supposedly what it's all about) have pretty much fixated on the brush nib! When I saw that Kuretake did watercolour pens with the same sort of nib I thought it would be fun to try a few.

I used Lemon Yellow to put down a base layer for the flowers but probably the biggest advantage was when it came to the background. The really fine point made it easier to get in to those fiddly spaces between the flowers with Light Blue.

The Kuretake colours played nicely with the Distress inks I used for the rest of the colouring and lifted to make highlights as a traditional watercolour would do (hopefully the detail shot will show that). So all in all, I'm pleased with those.





Stamps: Freesia and Mother's Day Centers (CHF, retired)

Ink: 
Brilliance by Tsukineko - Pearlescent Chocolate
Distress ink by Ranger - Mustard Seed, Wild Honey, Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint

Other: 
Clean Color pens by Kuretake - Lemon Yellow, Light Blue
Artograph Light Tracer

Hope all the mums out there are having a lovely day and hugs to anyone missing their mum. Thanks for stopping by!