Card Kit Reveal and Inspiration: Just Miss You
Our September 2020 Card Kit, Just Miss You is full of lovely sentiments, lots of color, and a bit of sparkle, too!
We have some phenomenal Simon exclusive products in this kit—the versatile, Just Miss You 6×8 stamp set and the Sending Smiles die set!
You’ll also find a Marvy Jewel Picker (handy for handling tiny embellishments), a variety of beautiful, Vicki Boutin patterned papers, coordinating mini cards and envelopes, and a Simon exclusive Smiles sequin pack! Simon brand envelopes and complementing cardstock round out this colorful kit.
Our Just Miss You Kit will have you sending smiles across the miles!
The NEW Just Miss You 6×8 stamp set and the NEW Sending Smiles die set are available for individual purchases in our store!
Don’t forget! We have LOTS of gorgeous card kit inspiration to access and add to in our Card Kit Galleries!
You can purchase the kit at $34.99, or you can subscribe to our kit of the month program for just $29.99 (plus S&H) per month to have our kits delivered right to your door each month!
If you are a subscriber who used Paypal to purchase your subscription, please be sure to pay the invoice that we send you within 3 business days. We have a limited number of this card kit in stock and don’t want you to miss out. For easier and quicker monthly processing, please contact us via email or telephone and we will put your credit card on file as a courtesy for you. Card kits bill and ship anytime between the 16 – 30 of every month.
Doodling with Debby: No Line Watercoloring Hints & Tips
Hi friends! Happy Wednesday! Please join me in welcoming the wonderful Debby Hughes back for her monthly installment of Doodling with Debby on our blog! Be sure to watch the video for more information and enjoy!
Hi, it’s Debby here and thank you for joining me for Doodling With Debby. This month I’m painting the gorgeous Spring Flowers Background from Shimon Says Stamp and giving tips and tricks for no-line watercolouring.
NO LINE WATERCOLOURING HINTS & TIPS
I stamped the Spring Flowers Background with Antique Linen Distress Ink on Fabriano Artistico Extra White Cold-pressed watercolour card. Here’s my first couple of tips when on-line watercolouring.
Firstly, choose a light, water-reactive ink such as Antique Linen – as you paint, the water in the paint reactivates the ink, and it blends with the paint to give a no-line look. If you are using a watery, pale colour to paint, for example, the edges of a petal, just make sure to bring your brush over the stamped line a few times to get the ink moving.
Secondly, a good watercolour card makes all the difference when watercolouring, whether it be no-line or not. I was recently practising a freestyle piece at home and grabbed multiple pieces of watercolour card on which to practice, and the results on the better-quality card were noticeable. I used Fabriano Artistico watercolour card, but another favourite is Arches. I choose a cold-pressed paper which has a slight texture because I like that look and the texture helps hold the water and allow more time for working.
Moving onto the paint, I like Daniel Smith watercolours, and I used them on this piece. However, I also love all sorts of other watercolour media from Distress Inks to Karin brushmakers to Mission Gold watercolours, Altenew watercolours, my list could go on and on. I think what I’m trying to say is that the watercolour medium you use is less important than the paper. If you want to invest in just one thing, make it the watercolour card you are using, and you will see the benefit.
The process I use for no-line watercolouring is based on getting areas of light and dark. If you paint the whole of a flower the same depth of colour, it will look very flat and uninteresting. Also, it will be difficult to make out one petal from the next. To get definition and dimension, you want to look for the nooks and crannies as Kathy Racoosin would say. Please check out Kathy’s colouring challenge if you don’t already do so. Kathy is amazing at colouring with any medium and has excellent tips and tricks. Looking for the nooks and crannies and making those where your deepest, most concentrated paint goes and then spread the paint out more lightly over the rest of the petal, trying to keep one area particularly light as if the sunlight was catching it.
When colouring in this way, I often use two techniques – the wet-in-wet technique and the wet-on-dry technique. Those sound very technical, but in fact, it just means how you get the darkest areas spreading out into the lightest. With the wet-in-wet technique, you can paint the whole of a petal in clean, clear water and then drop in the paint from your brush in the nooks where the shadows would be. The paint then spreads through the water, getting lighter and more dilute as it does. With the wet-on-dry technique, you lay down the concentrated paint in the nooks and then using a damp brush, draw out the paint over the rest of the area.
Both of these techniques are great for no-line watercolouring, where the aim is to get the transition from dark to light. I often used the wet-in-dry option when colouring this piece, and it is helpful to use two paintbrushes. Paint is expensive, and I don’t want to continuously be washing my brush out and losing all the paint. So, I keep one brush with a concentrated mix of paint and one with clean, clear water to draw the paint out over the rest of the area.
I tend not to go too dark for the first layer of paint. I prefer to build up the colour using layers until I’m happy with the result. This first layer is the time-consuming bit. However, once that layer is down, for me, that’s where the fun bit starts. I love moving around the areas, adding more depth here, a darker shadow there, slowly building and building the contrast. The imagery on this background is excellent for no-line watercolouring – simple lines with defined areas. One thing I’ve forgotten to mention up until this point is to avoid painting areas next to each other or the paint will move over the whole area and blend as one so dotting around from one petal to another and looking for where the neighbouring areas are to make sure there is nothing still wet is a good plan. You can use a heat tool to dry in between, but I prefer to let the paint dry naturally as I think you see the best blends and bleeds this way.
Let’s talk about colours for a moment. I chose an analogous colour scheme of reds, oranges and yellows. These are colours next to each other on the colour wheel and work together harmoniously. The leaves and berries in comparison are complementary colours with the green being complementary to the red and the purple to the yellow. These pops of complementary colour liven up the colour scheme. I think the berries are one of my favourite bits!
I could easily have kept going adding more layers, more accents and such but I decided to leave it and add some splatter. I like to use Winsor & Newton Permanent White Gouache. I squeezed a little onto my craft mat, mixed with just enough water so the paint will drop off the brush as I splatter liberally over the piece. I also splattered with a solution of Perfect Pearls for a little shimmer and shine.
Hindsight is a great thing, and in hindsight, I should’ve left the splatter until after this next step where I darkened a few areas even more with Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils. I chose a few pencils which matched my colour scheme and made sure they were sharp before going into those nooks and crannies and adding the extra contrast I felt was needed. I used a sepia pencil to add veins to the leaves and some extra depth to the berry tops also.
I then set the piece aside while I worked on the sentiment. I love the Summer Roses set from Gina K, and Simon Says Stamp, in particular, the large script with coordinating smaller sentiments perfect for adding on a skinny strip. Also, this set has matching dies which means it is ideal for adding the sentiment over this busy panel, so it pops up and stands out. I placed a piece of Ivory card in the Misti and treated it with Anti-Static powder before stamping the large Enjoy greeting in Versamark ink. This is a sticky ink that embossing powder will stick to. I used Antique Gold embossing powder from Simon Says Stamp and made sure to give it a good sprinkling to cover the whole of the area. I then melted the powder with a pre-heated heat tool. Once cool, I lined up the matching die, held it in place with washi tape and ran it through my Gemini Junior die cutting machine.
I also stamped, and white heat embossed a coordinating sentiment from the Summer Roses set on black card and trimmed to a skinny banner. I planned to add everything to an A2 card base, and so I worked out how I wanted everything placed before trimming the watercolour panel to size. I then added foam adhesive to the back of all of the pieces and adhered to the card base which I’d cut and scored from Ivory card. I used a T-square ruler to ensure I had my skinny strip on straight as I’m terrible for adding things on at a slight wonk! Finally, I added a few eggshell pearls from Little Things From Lucy’s cards which I held in place with Gina K Connect glue.
Well, that’s me for this month. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks for joining me and I hope to see you next time for Doodling With Debby.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
Watch below or in HD on YouTube.
SUPPLIES:
|
Thanks so much for stopping by, and thanks to Debby for being our guest!
Let’s Connect Blog Hop WINNERS!
Hello, friends! Have you seen our Simon exclusive Let’s Connect release? Our Simon Says Stamp exclusive Let’s Connect product lineup is full of products that are sure to bring you delight! Included you’ll find tons of gorgeous and intricate dies, sweet gnomes, unicorns, and other critters, as well as lots of pretty backgrounds stamps. There are some cheery new products from CZ Design and a brand new birthday-themed set of Suzy’s watercolor cards! We are so excited for you to play with all of these awesome new products!
To celebrate this phenomenal release, we hosted two amazing blog hops! The hops featured many talented designers and each one created wonderful projects to inspire you. If you missed either of the hops, you can find the direct links here: DAY ONE and DAY TWO.
A BIG thank you to all of YOU who joined us for the hops! We enjoy hearing from each of you, and your words of encouragement and appreciation to each of the designers mean so much to us here at Simon and to them. It’s our tradition to give away gift certificates to random commenters on each blog stop, and today we are revealing all of the winners! So without further ado, I present to you our winners!
DAY ONE HOP WINNERS:
from Simon Says Stamp’s blog: Viola Leary!
from Jennifer McGuire’s blog: Sue Stenzel!
from Cathy Zielske’s blog: Retta Lutte!
from Nina-Marie Trapani’s blog: Angie Fortner!
from Nichol Spohr’s blog: Christine Miller!
from Yana Smakula’s blog: Joy Meadows!
from Amy Rysavy’s blog: Kim U!
from Lisa Addesa’s blog: Judy Ellis Czarnecki!
from Heather Ruwe’s blog: sabinevdk!
from Kathy Racoosin’s blog: Trudie Vick!
from Suzy Plantamura’s blog: Susie Sonnier!
from Sidnie Des Jardins’s blog: Rita Fullmer!
from Bibi Cameron’s blog: Tami Priebe!
from Barb Engler’s blog: Peggy McCullar!
from Cheiron Brandon’s blog: Bunny Dobbie!
from Lea Lawson’s blog: Lisaa728!
DAY TWO HOP WINNERS:
from Simon Says Stamp’s blog: Lara Read!
from Laura Bassen’s blog: Karen Reeves!
from Debby Hughes’s blog: Amy Bishop!
from Amanda Korotkova’s blog: Trina P!
from Caly Person’s blog: Monika Davis!
from Heather Hoffman’s blog: Rachel Vas’s!
from Yoonsun Hur’s blog: Pennee Hundley!
from Laurie Willison’s blog: Aleifiyah Hasan!
from Bobbi Lemanski’s blog: Lori Spitzer!
from Betty Wright’s blog: Queen Mary!
from Lin Brandyberry’s blog: Irishtiger!
from Preeti Chandran’s blog: Donna Verbeek!
from Dana Joy’s blog: Mary Ann Merrill!
from Daniel West’s blog: Lorraine Melin!
from Anna-Karin Evaldsson’s blog: MelissaKlepser!
from Karin Åkesdotter’s blog: Sue Bushman!
If you see your name listed above, CONGRATULATIONS! Please email [email protected] and let him know that you are one of our Let’s Connect Blog Hop winners! You’ll receive a $25 Gift Card. ???
Thanks again for hopping along with us! We hope you enjoy our fantastic Let’s Connect release and that they give you creative enjoyment for months to come!
Winning ROCKS, and so do you!
