A Card that Shimmers

Two pretty nice days in a row here in Ontario with some rain falling overnight – the way summer should be….but a bit late to get the act together! Hard to believe that Labour Day weekend is coming up and the kids go back to school. Yesterday we went to Rondeau and did another 25km on the bikes. Tired today.

I had a comment on another posting about what kind of coloured pencils and water colour pencils I use. I only use Prismacolor pencils for blending with gamsol. There are three kinds of Prismacolor pencils – the artist quality ones which are my favourite as they blend so well; the Scholar group which are less costly but do not blend as well and I do not recommend them as I get frustrated using them; and the skinny ones which are hard lead and are for tiny places and do not really blend at all. I bought the Scholar ones by mistake one day and I will not make that mistake again.

I have several different manufacturers’ water colour pencils. I see little difference in any of them so I just buy what’s on sale. My water colour paint sets are Artist Loft from Michaels – very inexpensive – less than $10.00 a set. They are good for cards but probably not the best for the serious water colour artist – I’m not at that level yet by far so these are good for practicing with.

I enjoy the comments people use and I’m open for suggestions or corrections. Feel free to leave yours. I try to answer them privately but sometimes I cannot or if I think it is a question that more than one person may have, I answer on the next blog posting.

  

Here’s a shimmery card I made the other day using a Penny Black Stamp…except for the butterfly which came from another set. This is the stamp that I cut that far right single flower from. I simply stamped it by itself here to complete the original design but I’ve used it by itself as well. Stay tuned for that card.

 

This one was stamped on water colour paper and I painted it with water colour paints – Artist Loft shimmer paint set which work quite well. However, I couldn’t seem to add much darker colour for shading with them so I used the Artist Loft regular water colour paints which sort of took away the shimmer effect…grrr. So I added another wash of the shimmer paint and then added some Stickles.

The background sky was first wet and then water colour paint was added to let flow. I stamped the flowers on post-it notes and cut them out and covered up the painted ones before the next step. Once the background sky was dry I splattered clear water over the top to form the design that reminds me of rain. The bottom green part was painted and let dry and then I used a Inkadinkado stamp to stamp that background using some Distress Ink to get a very light background of flowers and grasses.

I thought the black and white ribbon set it off nicely and it was then glued to a black piece of cardstock and then to a card base. Before gluing the decorated card front to the black, I die cut a fancy die cut from the middle of the black which I used on another card. Hey, no one sees it so why waste the paper!!! Yes, I’m a little frugal. The birthday sentiment is a black peel-off.

That’s all for a lovely Wednesday, 2016-08-31.

Cheers

Violet