Mixed media faux cloisonné gerbera for Uniko's 10th birthday!

Dusted off the blog and hopefully I can get back into posting more often again, rather than just on Facebook and Instagram. Doing a blog post is a great reminder of how I made some of my cards and so useful to look back on in the future! 

Today I have made a card to celebrate Uniko's 10th birthday. I wanted to try out one of the faux cloisonné techniques I recently came across and knew I wanted to experiment with the fabulous gerbera set. 

Pure Florals: Gerbera (Uniko Studio)

For this card, I used the magazine technique. I found a large photo of some yellow Echinacea in a gardening magazine, which I cut out and adhered to a piece of 200gsm white cardstock. I stamped both flower images (one of them twice) and both sizes of the leaf stamp in embossing ink, carefully choosing which parts of the photo to use, embossed in gold and fussy cut. I did find that using glossy magazine paper made the embossing slightly brittle and very easy to chip off so I'm making a note to be very careful with it, especially when fussy cutting the images. 

For my background I used something I previously made in a Tracy Evans workshop by using alcohol inks in plain water and dipping lightweight cardstock into it. This piece was primarily blues, greens and yellows though I can't remember now the colours of inks that I used. I added interest with some blue Distress Oxide splatters, stamped the sentiment in blue and used my embossing ink pad and gold EP to add a border to the edge of the card. I arranged my flowers and leaves on the card gluing the leaves flat. The partially opened flower has just been raised in the middle with foam pads and glued at the edges, whilst the two big blooms were stuck on with foam pads. 

I love how this turned out but next time I want to try using my IndigoBlu Luscious pigment powders to paint the flowers as I think this will give a more realistic cloisonné effect.

Pure Florals: Gerbera (Uniko Studio)

Supplies Used:

Stamps: Pure Florals: Gerbera, Simply Said Birthday (Uniko Studio)

Ink Pads: Stormy Sky (Distress Oxides), Cornflower Blue (Wendy Vecchi Archival - Ranger)

Embossing: WOW Embossing Pad, Gold embossing powder

Snippets: White cardstock (200gsm), Magazine paper, Alcohol inks

I would like to enter this card into the following challenge:

Quest 1: The Linky Party (Uniko Studio 10th Birthday Celebrations)

Many congratulations Bev, on reaching such a milestone birthday. It's no mean feat for a small company especially with all the crazy events of the past few years!

Thanks for visiting!

Stef

CC&S 179 Sketch: Pretty Peony

I loved making my card for CAS Colours and Sketches this week. Bev has designed us a great sketch and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it so I didn't waste any time faffing around trying to decide!

This lovely peony stamp was stamped and embossed in white. The BG is coloured with three blended Distress Inks. The flower was then watercoloured by removing the ink with water and a paintbrush, giving a bleached effect. A few splatters of water were then added to work together with the stamped image. What really makes it come alive is the next part. I used three different Promarker blues to shade around the flower edges and a light grey to add highlights to the petals. The sentiment is also stamped and embossed in white (it shows up better in real life!) and a few gems and sequins added to finish. Finally I attached two loops of coordinating ribbon to the top left hand edge before adhering it to a card blank.

Supplies Used:
Flower Stamp: Dinkie Peony (IndigoBlu)
Sentiment Stamp: Free with a Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine (Clearly Besotted)
Ink Pads: Tumbled Glass, Broken China & Salty Ocean (TH Distress)
Markers: Azure, Sky Blue, Arctic Blue & Cool Grey 4 (Letraset Promarkers)
Snippets: Watercolour paper, Sequins, Gems & Grosgrain ribbon

Please try and find some time to join us this week. Can't you tell I loads of fun doing this! Do visit some of the other DT blogs for even more inspiration.

Thanks for visiting!
Stef x

CC&S 166 Sketch: Watercolour Lifting

I've had lots of fun getting messy with inks again creating my DT card for CAS Colours and Sketches this week. I spotted this card on Anita's blog HERE and it reminded me that I had watched the same fab watercolour lifting video technique from Jennifer McGuire HERE and decided to try it out using this week's sketch drawn by our hostess Jane.

Next time I try this technique, and I will try it again because I loved doing it, I will use different paper. For this card I used a 230gsm watercolour paper but it seems to be a bit too porous and I don't think I managed to achieve quite such a marked effect as either Anita or Jennifer. I inked up four pieces of paper directly from inkpads, brushed them with water and dried them off with a heat gun. I then used a background stamp with Versamark and clear embossing powder on each piece. More water on top followed, mopping it up with kitchen roll which removes some of the ink leaving darker patches trapped underneath the embossing!

I then cut five equal pieces, inked the edges and placed them on a 7" x 5" card blank following Jane's sketch. The poppy die was cut from linen card and stuck on top with the sentiment hand-stamped to the side.

Supplies Used:
Watercolour paper: 230gsm (Crawford & Black)
Inkpads: Fired Brick, Broken China, Frayed Burlap, Worn Lipstick (TH Distress)
Stamps: Butterflies Block (Tanda Stamps), Sentiment Sampler (Paper Smooches)
Die: Prim Poppy (Memory Box)

The inspiration for my colour scheme was drawn from this week's challenge #334 at ColourQ so I would like to enter my card into their competition. I don't own any SU colours so have just used the closest that were suitable for this technique.

Thanks for visiting my blog today. I hope you all enjoy a lovely Easter weekend whatever you're doing.

Stef x