A Very Special Cutie - Coloring with Stencils

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When I sat down to make today's card I had a sudden flashback to a shopping trip with my friend Mel - the chef for my retreats.

She was very carefully looking through the cutie-type oranges at the store to pick some for retreat, and she was looking for a particular kind of wrinkly small orange that she told me was absolutely the best. 

When someone who can cook like Mel can cook tells you a particular kind of orange is the best orange, you can bet your bippy it's the best orange. 

Thankfully, she found some, and so I am able to confirm that they are pretty much the best orange around. I actually have not seen them since because I haven't shopped in a grocery store for seven years! 

I don't like shopping of any kind in person - I never have. So when Instacart launched here, I was emancipated from this dreaded task, and saved hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars shopping for groceries online. Impulse buys are real, and they steal from your budget in a pretty horrifying way, as I learned after I stopped shopping. As much as I hated shopping, I did enjoy discovering new things from time to time, and little things like this fleeting orange that just makes a brief appearance every year are no longer part of my life. 

So it's a happy memory of a delightful fruit shared with a delightful friend, and that's what was in my head when I made today's card.

I have an unreasonable bias towards the fizzy stencil I'm using today, so I thought I'd show you how I "color" with it. 

First - I cut both a positive and negative mask for the cuties image from this graphic and fun cuties stamp set. Then I masked the oranges and leaves and used Electro Pop Loud Lime ink to stencil the background. I removed those masks and put down the background part of the mask and used the same stencil and Electro Pop orange to fill in the oranges. Then I just doodled half of the leaf images with a Copic multiliner and stamped the sentiment. 

I deliberately mis-aligned the stencil to enhance the distinction between foreground and background, but it's just as easy to make them seamless. 

Isn't that so clean and fun?

Here are all the supplies I used today.

STAMPS- Little Cutie - Gina K Designs [ GNK ] GKD Amalgam Ink Pad- Jet Black [ GNK ] STENCIL- Fizzy - Gina K Designs [ GNK ] Electro Pop Ink Pads- Set of 8 - Gina... [ GNK ] Life Changing Blender Brush: 2-Pack [ PFS ] Understand Blue MINI Slimline Folded... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Slimline Folded... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #3... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #1... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #2... [ CTC ] Art Anthology BIG CRAFT MAT 24x36 311473 [ SSS ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSP | SSS | ELH ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Crafter's Companion GEMINI... [ SSS ] Scor-Pal MINI SCOR-BUDDY Scoring... [ SSS ] Storage Envelopes, Medium 25pk,... [ ELH ] CheckOutStore Stamp & Die Clear... [ CHC ] Extra Large -50 pk, Avery Elle Stamp... [ ELH ] Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045 [ SSS | CST ] Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies [ ART ]

If you are looking for the lumpy bumpy oranges in stores, AKA Citrus Reticulata oranges in Utah, they are briefly available in the April/May time frame. Sunkist produces them, grown in the US, and sometimes they come in a little bag. Like all mandarins and lots of citrus (this one is oversized) they are native to Southeast Asia, but like my little calamondin and other citrus, they do well in Texas and Florida. 

Loveyameanitbye.

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VIDEO: Specimen Cards + MIX442

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*

Happy Friday! 

Today I decided to do a blast from the past - a.k.a. the late 1900s when I started stamping. We did all sorts of fun swaps back then, because stamping instruction on the internet was just getting started - so we learned new design ideas by exchanging actual finished projects, which we then kept in books as inspiration guides for us. 

In the really great ATC swaps I was in on Splitcoast, I was WAY out of my depth. The people making ATCs had been at stamping a lot longer than I had, and their work was amazing. They were all really nice about my amateur trading cards!

One of the things that was all the rage were specimen cards. During the time period I started stamping, the card style was heavily vintage. Tim Holtz was born into the world at just the right time, because the mood of the stamping community in the late 90s definitely favored what became his signature style, and his inks and color palette were spot on with what everyone was creating and trading. 

I remember some of the groups I used to stamp in locally then and there were SUCH great mixed media artists in.

The BIBLE a few years later in the early 2000s reflected that - this marvelous ATC book - looking through that is like walking back through those years.

Some of the best swaps I ever received were specimen cards though. Remember - this was before personal die cutting - LONG before personal die cutting - so anything that required a window, required hand cutting with a craft knife - UGH - and punches were not common yet. See how much better the world is for stampers?

Anyway, in cards of that time, the "specimens" were usually ephemera, and I received some with transparency windows, some with glassine (rarer) and a few with waxed paper (more common), and I loved them all.

So when I found these stunning, clear botanicals on Etsy, my mind raced back to that decade, and I had to try reviving these fun swap items. 

I started with these pre-cut and scored slimline cards, because they are sized perfectly for the stickers. I used these rounded rectangle dies to create the openings - they do need to go through both sides of the card - but see my notes in the video about what I think would make even more fun openings.

I blended Tea Dye and Vintage Photo all over them and stamped them with a variety of these stamps, and then splattered them all with Salvaged Patina. I used these acetate sheets for the windows, Scor-Tape and these mushroom stickers and these botanical stickers for the specimens. How fun are these?

I love them SO much! I hope you try this. It's such a beautiful throwback project, AND it's the MIX-ability challenge today, so if you do make some, please upload them to the challenge gallery. You can find all the details here. 

Here is the video! PLEASE NOTE - this is not in HD and I'm sorry - 

major difficulties with Facebook Live are killing me. 

Here are all the supplies I used today.

Summer 2021 Buy It All Bundle... [ WPL ] Stitched Rounded Rectangle Dies -... [ PNK ] Hero Arts Acetate Sheets [ HA ] 40pcs Flower transparent stickers... [ ETS ] 40pcs Flower transparent stickers... [ ETS ] Artist Trading Card Workshop: Create,... [ AMZUS ] Life Changing Blender Brush: 2-Pack [ PFS ] Flower Stickers Ferns Eucalyptus... [ ETS ] Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Ink Pad 2021... [ SSS ] Tea Dye Distress Ink Pad - Tim Holtz [ ACH ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad VINTAGE... [ SSS ] Scor-Tape 0.125 Inch Crafting Tape at... [ SSS ] Tombow MONO MULTI Liquid Glue Two... [ SSS ] Understand Blue MINI Slimline Folded... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Slimline Folded... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #3... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #1... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #2... [ CTC ] My Sweet Petunia [ MSP ] Art Anthology BIG CRAFT MAT 24x36 311473 [ SSS ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Crafter's Companion GEMINI... [ SSS ] Scor-Pal MINI SCOR-BUDDY Scoring... [ SSS ] Storage Envelopes, Medium 25pk,... [ ELH ] CheckOutStore Stamp & Die Clear... [ CHC ] Extra Large -50 pk, Avery Elle Stamp... [ ELH ] Mermaid tidy towel case and glue... [ ETS ] Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045 [ SSS | CST ] Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies [ ART ]

Loveyameanitbye.

Like this post? Never miss a post by following me!

CURRENT COUPON CODES
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Phone stand for filming link below in the banner - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE