Using Dawn Woleslagle's technique of stamping in distress ink then rolling the edges in a second color for blending worked great. Love how this one turned out.


Stamps: Mama Elephant - Waterblooms
Ink: Distress ink in Picked Raspberry, Ripe Persimmon, Crushed Olive, Peeled Paint, Peacock Feathers, Salty Ocean

This is my first time really trying to freehand watercolor an image. I was really inspired by Jennifer Rzasa freehand style and Dawn Woleslagle's colors and roses. Really gorgeous stuff! I started with 3 circular-ish blobs of water on the watercolor paper. Then I used some watercolor paints to start the base colorwash. They were really light and not blending as much as I'd wanted so I started to use my Derwent Inktense pencils. I touched my wet brush to the pencil lead and the color was certainly intese but it gave the images so much more depth. I kept trying to think of the way that Dawn had painted her roses. This was quite time consuming but it was a good experience. I think the hardest thing about watercolor painting in general.. is the waiting! If you don't wait for parts to dry, the rest of the picture can get muddled. Definitely had to be patient for this one.

I'm still not so good at using Gelatos. Maybe I don't wait enough for the water to loosen up the stick. And sometimes I get little flakes inside of the color mixing with water. Weird huh?
I haven't put this on a card yet, but I will soon.

Stamps: Hero Arts - Large Open Flower, Sweet Stamp Shop - Elegant Flowers
ink: Faber-Castell Gelatos in guava, bubble gum, red cherry, lavender, grape, lime, green tea

I used WPlus9 Fresh Cut Florals stamp for this one. The technique was a mix of Jennifer Rzasa's from Day 3 and a technique by Dawn Woleslagle where she rolled the edges of the stamp in a secondary color to assist with blending. I'm pretty sure it was Dawn but now I'm questioning it myself since I can't seem to find the class video that references the technique.

Stamps: WPlus9 - Fresh Cut Florals, Lawn Fawn - Sophie's Sentiments
Ink: Distress Ink in Picked Raspberry, Ripe Persimmon, Crushed Olive, Peeled Paint, Mustard Seed, Wild Honey

I've been playing with watercolor backgrounds since I saw Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner do it. I LOVE the variety of ways to do it and how it turns out after it's dry. This one I used a technique mentioned by Jennifer using rubber cement to protect the stamp images so I could watercolor the background.
Stamps: Sweet Stamp Shop - Balloons, Lawn Fawn - Sophie's Sentiments Ink: Distress Ink in Peacock Feathers, Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed

So lessons for this course are over (boo!) and this is one design idea I was determined to try before the class finished. I followed Pamela Ho's card design but haven't done the embossing powder portion of the tutorial yet (clear embossing one or a couple of triangles). But the design is so cool. The hardest part is making the shapes appear random. Her card design is larger, but I figured this would be a good start. I really like this idea. It's simple, but bold. I could make a bunch of these pretty easily (it would just take time to lay out the masked shapes.

Day 3 is about Optical Illusions - FUN!

I love this design/style even more than I'd anticipated. It's so versatile and playful! I followed Laura Bassen's masked and circle stamp idea. And I'm always happy if I can make cards that are masculine-ish b/c that's the hardest for me. The 1" post-it tape is so handy for masking off a border like this. Ill have to try some bigger dies and some masking sheets (which I have yet to buy - as if i need to shop more!).

I cheated a bit b/c I messed up doing this straight on the card. So I stamped it all on a separate sheet that I can mount on a card. AND of course right when I'm about to finish, I realized there was a big ol' nasty smudge at the bottom of the card in the white space. I used a blade to sort of scratch off the surface but it's a bit fuzzy now. So I think I'll end up trimming the card front down to have a white space around the inked area and mount it on a Kraft card. I didn't think of that until this morning so I haven't had a chance to do it yet since I took this picture last night.

I followed Heather Campbell's day 2 example here. I get the idea, but it's a bit challenging to keep all of the pieces in the appropriate order. I used post it tape to keep the chevrons in place while I fiddled with the other die cut pieces.

The Stenciled Online Card Class is over (boooo! T_T) but I'm still attempting to use the techniques. I didn't immediately reference any videos for this and I just pulled the technique from memory - I figured if I can remember it, it must've made a strong enough impression that I should try it. I've seen this done a few times - using the stencil to fill in color and then shifting the stencil to fill in more empty space. I LOVE how this background turned out!

I picked out my pinkish distress inks and inked the colors in an ombre fashion diagonally from upper left to lower right corner. Then I cleaned off the stencil and positioned the stencil to cover the inked areas. Then I inked ombre again from lower right to upper left.

Incorporated both of Kristina Werner's technique and style from day 2. For the stencil, I found splatter images I liked and cut them out on my Silhouette Portrait.

Die: Die-namics - Bracket Edge

Today's lesson made me so eager to go home to try all of the techniques! I'm so happy with the results!

• trees/house and snowflake are from Birds Cards Xmas Cut Files
• "joy" is text I welded together

I cut the design from 4 sheets of different colored cardstock and proceeded to put the puzzles back together! Because I did it this way, and didn't have time to figure out how to layer the cuts in the silhouette software in a clean way, I didnt actually layer the elements. They're all independent..

I haven't even had the chance to trim and put these on cards yet. I'd like to probably add some small embellishments and/or glitters. These were more just a chance to try out the technique that Jennifer McGuire showed in class. I actually enjoyed putting these together because I like puzzles and I like meticulous detail type of work. I know.. I'm weird.