I had an interesting conversation with my neighbor this afternoon. She's been going through some boxes of letters and cards that have been in her attic. You know how you have those boxes in your attic that you put there when you moved in and you never looked at them again?
She had letters and cards from decades ago - including letters from her sister, who had recently passed away. She spent a lot of time reading over them and finding some treasures.
I haven't written an actual letter in a long time, but I remember stationery, and writing letters and trying to focus on my handwriting.
A different time, for sure. There won't be boxes of emails to look through, that's for sure.
Send those cards out.
I've had to make a few sympathy cards lately, and those are harder cards to make. I think as cardmakers, we want to make sure particularly those are perfect and send the right message.
For me, that means abstraction, and so that's what I did for these two.
Remember the Duoprinting with Chlorophyll video? This technique is one of my faves for sympathy cards. This particular plant had a hint of purple in it, so I made the card base Wild Lilac. The sentiment (love this scripty font) is from this set, stamped in Nocturne in the MISTI.
Sometimes when you have a new photopolymer stamp that's a sentiment, and it hasn't been inked yet so it's hard to align - you can do this little trick. Put your card base down in the MISTI, and take the imaging sheet from the stamp, which is so much easier to see. Align that sheet on your card so the sentiment is straight, hold it down with a magnet, line up the stamp on top of the sheet, close the lid and pick up the stamp. Just a little trick that makes it easier for this old blind lady.
Next, staying with abstraction, I thought I'd be brave and try a little Eclipse technique on a hand painted landscape. I used Kyanite (a sparkly blue grey - you can see some of the sparkles on the mountain), Moonglow, Jadeite, Mummy Bauxite and Mayan Dark Blue on a piece of watercolor paper I had sprayed with water so the colors would move on their own. Just a few strokes and it sort of looked landscapey. I let it dry and then I used this heart die to cut that panel as well as three more from white cardstock. I had noticed that most of the sentiments in this set fit inside that heart, so that was perfect. I matted the watercolor paper with black, attached that to the card base, and then glued all the hearts together and glued them into the opening on the watercolor paper. The sentiment was stamped in Nocturne on top. This is the perfect sympathy set with 21 sentiments and some beautiful images, that come with this matching die set.
I had such a wonderful, peaceful time painting this sweet image - and even though I did her ears darker, I colored her to look like my beloved childhood pet - a golden retreiver names Tzu Hsi. She was not the brightest dog on the planet, but I'm quite certain she was the sweetest.
Head over to the new section at IO this morning and see what they've got. Mitra is an awesome human and they have SUCH a wide range of stamps - a little something for everyone.
Y'ALL. I went down a long rabbit hole with one stamp today and I had so much fun. So grab a drink for the explanations, because they are long and fun.
I love builder sets, because they give me design freedom. I can do part or all of an image, which gives you an astonishing amount of liberty in the cardmaking department.
This beautiful new stamp set is a builder in every way - it's a layering set, but the central image - the word love is both a layering stamp AND a layering die that's a perfect match. You'll see what I mean.
I used all of the above in the first project. This is a crazy mashup of MISTI awesomeness and stamp and die awesomeness, so buckle up.
Next I took the larger layering image that has the big flowers on it and I stamped that two or three times in the MISTI with embossing ink. I applied Are You Cerise to that, and thumped off the excess. Then I set up the image with the layering leaf images and stamped those a few times with embossing ink and added Slime and thumped off the excess. Then I repeated that with the image with the smaller flowers, and added Orange county to those. Then I spritzed the whole thing with water to activate the watercolor and wahoo - it worked! I got great color placement but also the fun of some grunge watercolor. Then, to add a little sparkle, I die cut the main word from gold no-shed glitter paper.
Next - I decided to use opaque images. I love how this set is a spot color style set - meaning the layers don't exactly match the outline - it's so modern and fun. I thought it might be cool to try bright inks on a darker cardstock. so I stamped the images in Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers and Twisted Citron Oxide inks, with some Unicorn for the white.
But first I stamped the entire image in Unicorn, which you can see around the image poking out here and there just for some pops of white. After all the layers were done, then I stamped the entire outline image in Nocturne. Such a fun process.
Then I did just a more traditional one with this same stamp set, but I chose not to stamp a few of the layered images of the leaves, again, to have a little extra white space, and because I can! I stamped the layers I used in Red Hot and Slate, and the card base is Red Hot. This would make an AWESOME mass production set! It would also make gorgeous wedding invitations I think. The builder sentiments are super fun, so I used one of them here.
Next, I used this new bundle to create a card set with just little pops of color. I colored most of the hearts in cool grey Copics, and gave them each a little shadow. I colored one little piece (see what I did there) and added matching cardstock, except for the green strip - I didn't have a cardstock that color, so I just colored that strip with the Copic Marker, again, because I can!
Then - remember this monster from Stamptember? They have a new monster set today and it's SOOOOO cute! There are little builder pieces like arms and legs that you can add which are hilarious. I decided to do a little jazz hands action with the smaller monster. Here's what I did. I had a piece of watercolored background in the UFO pile, and I stamped and cut the monster and five little arms from this piece with the matching dies. Then I put the little disembodied arms on a Distress Oxide Background of Peacock Feathers and Twisted Citron (because they were already on my desk), and then carefully picked up the little arm and stamped an arm underneath it because the image in the bundle has those little motion marks, which I wanted. Then I glued each arm down, and I added the monster with an action wobbler - you can see a quick clip of that below.
Here's his wobble! :)
They have an awesome free set this month, and a cute new turnabout as well, so you can see the full release bundle here and see all the supplies I used below!
