Kingfisher and Eucalyptus

When designing the Kingfishers clear stamps, I was careful to leave enough space between the little bird and the blossoms to make masking easy. I knew I would eventually want to create cards featuring other types of foliage, including eucalyptus leaves and gumnuts. Today's tutorial is a step-by-step guide for doing just that.

1. Choose the cardstock, ink and papers that you want to use for your project. I'm going for a neutral, monochromatic colour scheme, with black and warm grey cardstock and black ink. I'll be adding some additional colouring with grey toned alcohol markers and white pencil.

2. Place the stamp on an acrylic block or stamping platform. Use a sticky note, some tape or masking paper to cover the little blossoms. You might need to cut away some of the mask if it covers any of the bird image.

3. Ink the stamp, remove the mask, then stamp onto the cardstock.

4. Choose the foliage you want to add to the design. I find it useful to lay the backing acetate from the stamp set over the cardstock to see how the images will merge. 

5. Use the same masking method to remove any details that will obscure your little bird. In my case, I had to mask a leaf that would cover the bird's beak. 

6. If necessary, use a black pen to fill in any lost details, such as the branch the little bird is sitting on. Make sure you take it up into the foliage too.

7. Time to colour. I used the darkest shades of grey in the background and the lighter shades on the bird and foliage. This helped to bring the images forward.

8. Add some white pencil in the highlight areas, including the top of the bird's head and beak, the high areas of the stick and leaves and the gumnut blossoms. Don't forget a little touch of white in the bird's eye.

9. I finished with a liquid layer of mica dust to give my little bird a sparkle.

Stamps:

Everything Papercraft - Dimension

When we talk about dimension in papercraft, we’re generally referring to the third spatial measurement known as depth. Since we begin our projects with flat pieces of paper that have only length and width, the challenge is in adding depth so that the eye perceives a three-dimensional image. Paper crafters meet this challenge by adding shadows and highlights that help to shape objects that are stamped, printed or drawn onto a flat surface.

We also create layered cards by fussy cutting elements and building them one on top of the other so that some items are “behind” and some are “in front”, tricking the eye into seeing depth. This is also done with stamped and masked images. Think of the little scenes we create that have a forested background with animals layered over the trees… that’s depth.

Stepped and pop-up cards are literally three-dimensional as they take up space not only vertically and horizontally, but also with depth.

Day 27 - "X"

At the risk of being repetitive, I've again used X-Press It Blending Card for the letter "X". Given that it's arguably the most difficult letter in the alphabet for finding inspiration, feel free to interpret today's challenge as loosely as you like.

YOUR TURN: Create a card using the letter "X" as your prompt.

Click the link to add a photo of your creation to the challenge:

CLICK HERE

INSPIRATION WORDS:

X-Press It blending card, Xmas, xyron, XOXO, X-tra, X-Fold cards

Products:

Merging Images

Last month I made a card using the little koala from the Warm Fuzzies digital set combined with one of the images from the Eucalyptus clear stamp set. I was very happy with the outcome so decided to try my hand at merging the digital versions, this time using the line drawing from the Eucalyptus set rather than the solid image.

I started by adding the line drawing of the leaves and gumnuts from the Eucalyptus set. The image on the left is flipped and resized to be slightly larger than the one on the right. As you can see, I moved the image down a little too, in an effort to reduce the repetitive look you sometimes get when stamping multiple times. Happily, the little koala is saved as a png with a transparent background, which meant I could simply drop him in on top. If you're not really into colouring, you can get the same result by using the coloured digital versions of each of these stamps.

Eucalyptus leaves are beautifully colourful and can include shades of green, blue, purple, brown, yellow, pink and red... that's almost every colour in the rainbow, plus a couple extra!

I've used dull greens as my base colour then added in the reds, browns and yellows over the top. To help blend the colours I add more of the lightest green as my final layer.

The gumnut flowers are coloured with three shades of red, starting with a base of the lightest colour and ending with the darkest shade in by the centre of the flower. Some yellow dots around the perimeter give the impression of pollen.

I love to colour the koala in various shades of warm grey... in fact, I used everything from W1 right up to W10!

Stamps:

Eucalyptus Leaves

It's an Aussie-fest here today, with two iconic images on one project!

I've used the single koala image from the new pop-up set, Warm Fuzzies, combined with the solid leaf stamp from the Eucalyptus clear stamp set. The eucalyptus leaves have been stamped with distress markers to form the background of my card.

The little koala was printed directly onto a piece of X-PressIt blending card, which is ideal for colouring with alcohol markers as it allows the colours to mix and blend nicely, and then fussy cut with a small pair of scissors. I always add a little more oomph to the eyes by colouring the pupils with a black pen and adding a white highlight.

To help with positioning everything evenly, I'm going to place the koala on a piece of card stock, which will be adhered to my card front, and trace a light pencil line around the outside. This will give me a guide for placing the eucalyptus leaves.

Solid stamps are great for adding multiple colours with just one impression. I'm going to colour the image with distress ink markers, adding greens, yellows and browns to the leaves and reds and pinks to the flowers. It will take several impressions to fill up the entire space, and to prevent it looking too repetitive, I'm going to move the stamp around as I make the impressions, sometimes masking out sections.

To get a beautiful watercolour look, I'm using my water brush directly over the stamped ink. The impression on the right hand side hasn't yet had any water added to it, while the other parts have. You can see the difference before and after the addition of the water.

My completed background is now ready for the little koala, which I'll attach with some foam tape to give a little more dimension to the project.

Stamps: