Floral Collages

Hello everyone, I hope that you are keeping well. I have a couple of projects to share with you today, featuring stamps from our most recent TV shows on Create and Craft. We had a great mixture of brand new stamps and some fabulous useful favourites on the show, alongside some beautiful papers and some great little tools.

My first project is a journal page spread featuring lots of the stamps from the show. I started by stamping Rosella, a lovely large poppy stamp onto one of the pages, and masked this using Masking Tissue. I stamped a large circle from Make Your Mark, and masked this as well. I then started to build up the background, adding images from Numeri, Edgy Edges and Make Your Mark. I stuck to a colour palette of bluey purple, green and grey. I love this colour combination, and will definitely use it again. I added splatters of watered down watercolour paint over the background, and stamped the Rosella image twice more onto the opposite page.

I stamped the flower heads four times onto some scrap drawing cartridge and coloured these with watercolour paints. I cut them out and decoupaged the layers in sets of two and added them to the two flowers on the left hand page. I removed the circle mask from the other flower and added a circle frame mask so that I could add some colour to the circle shape itself on the page using some green ink. I removed the frame and the poppy mask. I coloured the flower using the watercolour paints.

Finally, I stamped some sentiments onto some scrap card that I had coloured when making a previous project. It toned in really well with my colour scheme. I also used masking tape to cover up parts of the Mindfulness stamp to leave a couple of the big wors, which I inked up, removed the tape, then stamped these onto some of the same coloured background. I added the sentiment strips onto the pages in a balanced way.

I really enjoy making journal pages. They are a great way of trying out ideas, that you can often adapt to cards at a later date. For example, the single flower with the circle highlight would make a great CAS card. You could use the flower with a single background stamping of the Numeri stamp on a card, or go for a more colloaged effect using a combination of these stamps as I have done in these pages. You can vary the colours, go for a monochrome colour scheme, opt for a traditional red poppy, or use similar colour to this layout, the sky really is the limit. If your ideas don't work out, just turn the page and start again. It's only a piece of paper, after all.

 My second project is a tag card. I used a plain white tag, but you could use the really useful Acrylic Tag Template Tool to create something similar. I stamped Blossom Spray twice onto the tag, and masked the images with Masking Tissue. I added some background colour to the tag using Distress Oxide Ink and a blending brush. I then stamped Scripted Fragments with grey Versafine Clair ink over the top before removing the masks. I coloured the flowers and leaves with coloured pencils.

I used a piece of black card to make a card blank, chopping off the corners to echo the shape of the tag. If you used the tag tool to make your tag, you could do the same thing with your folded black card to make your card blank, simply by using one of the circles around the tag template to get the larger size.

I will be back later in the month to share more projects with you. Thanks so much for stopping by, xx

Stamping on Black Card

Hello everyone, I have a few projects to share with you today using the stamps that we brought to you on last month's TV shows on Hochanda. All of the projects share a common technique; stamping on black card with acrylic paint, which suits these doodle style stamps really well. I was shown this technique a long time ago by the very talented Lin Brown, and certainly do not try to pass it off as something I invented myself.

For my first project, I painted a piece of sticky backed canvas with some paint, watered down slightly, blending the colours where they met. I dried this layer, and stamped a flower from Doodle Butterfly over the top using white acrylic paint, for a subtle effect. Once dry, I stamped some of the words found on Snowdrop Script and Edgy Edges, using Archival Ink. I added some doodle stems using green Archival Ink.

To create the flowers, I added white paint to the stamps, then added the other colours over the top, before stamping onto black card. I chose a mixture of blue and green paint over the white. I fussy cut the images, leaving a slight border, and adhered them to the tag shape, which I matted onto black card as well. Some coloured ric rac completed the tag.

For my second project, I coloured a whiteboard tag with green and blue ink before stamping the image from Edgy Edges using Teal ink over the top. I created two butterflies as before, and stamped the sentiment onto a strip of left over card, which I then cut into pieces before adding to the tag. Blue and green ribbon complete the tag.

This card feels a little on the busy side! However, I wanted to show you what you could do with these stamps, and you could certainly leave some of the elements out, or incorporate them all!

I started by colouring the background with Distress Oxide Inks, and adding overstamping with a mesh design from Rustic Fragments. I used a darker version of each colour from the background for a tone on tone effect. I edged the background with the top of the flower head using black ink for a decorative border.

I created the flowers and dragonflies in the same way as before, using green, yellow and pink paint on top of white paint.

Thanks for stopping by, I will be back later in the month with more projects to share with you.

xx