Amore Laurafadora: Dimensional Quilt
Hi friends! Happy Friday! Welcome to the latest sunshine-y and happy edition of Amore Laurafadora with our friend, Laura Bassen! She’s made this happy card showcasing our NEW Dimensional Quilt cling stamp as well as (oldie but goodie) CZ Thank You die set, and a mix of Simon Says Stamp exclusive inks! For that perfect sparkly finish to your sentiment, just add glitter paper! Be sure to watch the video for all the details, and enjoy!
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Thanks so much for stopping by, and thanks to Laura for being our guest!
One Stamp, Five Ways: Mom’s Spring Flowers
Hi friends! Please join me in welcoming special guest Suzy Plantamura with her monthly installment of our One Stamp Five Ways series! Read on and enjoy!
Hello friends! Today I have a “one stamp, five ways” post to share with you using one of the stamp sets from the brand new Hello Gorgeous release. I decided to use my favorite stamp set from the release called Mom’s Spring Flowers. Although the stamp set only has one floral grouping image in it, I felt pretty confident that I could make 5 cards with it because it has so many great sentiments! Plus we all know I love to color flowers!
I started by stamping the floral image on white cardstock with black ink. I then colored the flowers in with a mixture of different colored pencils I have including Polychromos, Prismacolors, and Caran d’Ache Luminance. I like using a mixture of pencils since they all have different colors and blend differently. People often ask if I use gamsol to blend and I don’t. I use a blending pencil by Caran d’Ache that works so well – it is like a wax stick and just mixes all the colors together beautifully. I also often use a white Prismacolor to lighten areas (especially around the edges of flower petals) and mix colors as it is the most waxy of all of the brands.
I die-cut this piece and mounted it on a magenta card base. I embossed the sentiment with black embossing powder. I remember years ago when I first started making cards, watching a video by Jennifer McGuire where instead of using black embossing powder, she prefers to use black ink and emboss over it with clear embossing powder. I never really knew why until I embossed the sentiment on this card with black embossing powder. It didn’t cover that well and the letters didn’t look sharp. I learned my lesson when I tried the other way in another card in this post and got much better results! I added some Black Board and Pink Orchid Nuvo drops and a few sparkling clear sequins around the sentiment. I also used the black drops over the all the little dots in the center of the flowers.
My next card is a slimline design. I start all my slimline cards using the largest rectangle in the SSS Nested Slimline Rectangle dies to die-cut a white cardstock base. I then stamped the floral grouping with black ink on this piece and on a piece of masking paper. I cut the bottom flower out and attached it over the bottom of the grouping. I then stamped the floral group again with just the bottom half of the stamp showing. When I removed the masking paper, it looked perfect as a lengthened design for the slimline. I colored the flowers in with Copic markers. I used a warm gray to add shadows behind the images so they looked more dimensional.
I mounted this piece on Lawn Fawn Guava cardstock (my favorite color of all time as it’s a coral reddish color). I die-cut a banner out of the same cardstock and embossed a sentiment from the stamp set with Ranger white embossing powder. I attached that to the bottom of the card with foam tape beneath it. I used a sentiment from the new Foundations reverse sentiment labels below it. Last I added some sparkling clear sequins and Black Board Nuvo drops around the sentiments and on the center of the flowers.
I embossed the floral stamp on the top and the bottom of a piece of Arches cold press watercolor paper using Garden Patina embossing powder. I wanted the card to be all one color, so I painted the inside of the flowers with Tonic Shimmer Powders. I used a mix of colors in blues and greens so there would be a little bit of difference between the flowers and the leaves. I flicked some of the shimmer powder over the design once it was dry.
I stamped the sentiment with Intense Black Ink. By using my Misti, I was able to stamp it several times so I got it really black. Sometimes it takes multiple times when you are stamping on cold press watercolor paper. I then embossed over it with SSS clear embossing powder. Jennifer was right as it is a much crisper sentiment when you do it this way instead of using black embossing powder as I did in my first card. I added some Chalk Board Nuvo Drops to tie in the black around the sentiment. I also added some sparkling clear sequins.
This time I made a mini-slimline card by die-cutting a piece of Arches watercolor paper with the SSS Mini Slimline Rectangle dies. I like starting all my slimline and mini-slimline cards with these Simon dies as then I can mount them on colored cardstock once they are done which frames them. I embossed the floral image over the center with Ranger white embossing powder. It fit perfectly on this size/shape card front.
I painted in the design with Daniel Smith watercolors. I embossed a sentiment on a banner with white embossing powder. I added some sparkling clear sequins and Pink Orchid Nuvo drops around the banner.
I was trying to think of one more way to color the flowers, but I had already used Copics, colored pencils, watercolors, and shimmer powders! I like to show five different techniques with each stamp, so I had to think out of the box for this one. I decided to paper piece it which ended up rather time consuming, but I loved how it turned out. My advice would be to use this technique with a stamp set that has less petals on it! I started by watercoloring the background with just a wash of oranges and pinks on a piece of Arches watercolor paper. I stamped the floral design on this piece with black ink letting it hang off the edge so I would have room for a big sentiment on the bottom. Lucky for me, this ended up giving me less petals to fill in with paper although that wasn’t planned!
I then stamped the design on a bunch of my paper scraps in greens for the leaves and oranges and pinks for the flowers. I had just organized all my paper scraps from SSS card kits, so this was a perfect way to use some of them! I cut out each petal and glued it to the design in a patchwork fashion. I embossed a sentiment from the new XL Spring Greetings stamp set with Tim Holtz Wild Honey embossing glaze. I attached that to the bottom of the card with foam tape. I used some Nuvo drops in Ripened Pumpkin and English Mustard and some sparkling clear sequins around the sentiment.
I hope you enjoyed this “one stamp, five ways” post today. I do one of these posts on my blog each week. It is ALWAYS a challenge for me to think of 5 ways to use a stamp set, but I love that it stretches my creativity and makes me think of new ways to use my products. I ended up loving the patchwork paper piecing design I used on the last card and I never would have thought of using the stamp set this way if I didn’t challenge myself. Thanks so much for visiting today and enjoy the new Hello Gorgeous release! Suzy
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Thanks so much for stopping by, and thanks to Suzy for being our guest!
Support Ukraine Blog Hop
Hi friends! We are reposting this gorgeous card by very special guest Yana Smakula in honor of a special blog hop put on by our friends at Studio Katia! If you want to start at the beginning head over to Studio Katia’s blog HERE. Read on to learn more about their special funding efforts for Ukraine:
From now until May 2022 100% Of net profits from the Sunflower Of Hope and All products In the Hope Collection will be donated to Save the Children Organization for their efforts in Ukraine.
There will be no prizes for the hop as it is purely to raise awareness and funds for the awful crisis.
Hello, crafters, this is Yana Smakula for Simon Says Stamp!
As you may or may not know, I am Ukrainian and I am currently located in western Ukraine. You might think this is not the time for me to be making cards and filming videos, but card making has always been my therapy and it is even more so now. I will continue to create cards and film videos for as long as I can. And I thank you for your support.
Instagram is booming with blue and yellow cards these days. There are so many amazingly inspiring projects featuring the two colors of the Ukrainian flag – blue, for clear blue sky, and yellow, for fields of wheat or fields of sunflowers which is a national flower of Ukraine.
I was inspired by all your projects, I wanted to create a sunflower card myself. Simon Says Stamp has several amazing stamp sets that feature sunflowers, either alone or in combination with other flowers. I picked the Sunflower Garden stamp set.
I love all things abstract and I also love to experiment with my Copic markers. This led me to a different way to color which I like to call Copic Blend Free coloring. I say Copic because I use Copic markers for this technique, but other alcohol markers work just as well.
The finished image has a modern graphic colored look to it, and the best part about it is you don’t need alcohol markers that blend well together, in fact, the greater difference in color or shade of your markers, the better it is for this technique.
I stamped the image in Versafine Vintage Sepia ink, I didn’t want to use black, as I opted for softer colors. You can also try stamping in the type and color of ink you use for no-line Coloring, and use this coloring technique for a no-line colored result. I imagine that would look quite beautiful. I’m hoping to try it one day.
My stamping was done on Simon’s 130lb cardstock as I love this paper for coloring with Copic markers. I used my heat tool and heat set the ink as the type of ink I used is not Copic markers friendly and it bleeds when it comes in contact with alcohol.
I trimmed my panel to 3 1/2 x 4 3/4” and began coloring. The idea is not to do any blending. To achieve this, you need to let the ink you’ve applied dry before you apply the next color on top.
You can use this coloring method with many different images and I’ve demonstrated the technique in the past featuring both small and large images. It works not only for flowers but other types of images too.
The darker you go, the less of an area you cover. Remember not to blend anything, just apply a solid layer of color. It is up to you how many marker colors to use to color your image in this way. I would say use 3 markers, a light, a medium, and a dark. If you have a big marker collection you can add a 4th or even a 5th color to add greater color variation to the flowers, especially if you are coloring a larger image.
I love this coloring method and the final result. It looks very different from the blended coloring. I know this is not for everyone, but ever so often I like to color this way. If you struggle with blending using your alcohol markers, this might be a very easy way for you to color.
Next, I stamped a sentiment for my card – I selected one that reads Have Faith. We all need to have faith these days and believe in a peaceful tomorrow. Here I used Versafine Onyx Black ink to add more contrast to the sentiment.
To add detail to the flower centers I used my 0.5 Sakura Gel Roll pen and added white dots in small clusters onto the brown centers. They helped create the highlights for the seeds.
I foam mounted this panel onto a light blue card base and added a “things will work out” sub sentiment cut out from one of Simon’s pre-printed sentiment strips. I also embellished my card with the Four Leaf Clover sequins from Simon.
Thank you for spending time with me today. Thank you for your encouraging comments, emails, and DMs. I have faith and I hope peace will be here soon.
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