Smile in the rain

 

I have been having a play with a stamp set from Newton’s Nook, and the matching die set ‘Newton’s Rainy Day’. I have this for a few weeks now, and because I really, really struggle with cute animals and colouring, I have been holding-off playing with it. Today has been the day I have girded my loins and just got on with it.

I am not a colourist, I dabble – much like many of us, I am sure – and sometimes make mistakes, sometimes it works out right, but tend to (mostly) have fun playing.

This is my idea of playing. I stamped the main image four times – twice on Crafters Companion water-colour card, and twice on IndigoBlu stamping card. I coloured them all with my Zigs, and added Spectrum Noir sparkle to all of the umbrellas and water puddles at the end.

I found I didn’t know what colours to use except definitely wanted a yellow duck, and definitely wanted a blue puddle – the rest were experiments in colour. The cards with the purple cat and the red umbrella, and the brown cat and grey umbrella were in the IndigoBlu stamping card. I found that the zigs didn’t colour that well on this card, and left pen marks. The colour sank into the card very quickly, and I went over the imaged two of three times to try and even things out.

For the water-colour cards I wet down the area of card first, then went in with the colours, using my water-brush to spread the colour around a little, for a more uneven and water-coloured effect. I like the look of the texture of the water-colour card, so didn’t add too much depth.

The ‘Smile’ sentiment is from Altenew, which comes with a stamp and die set, but I only used the die. To get a full yellow effect, I wet down a piece of water-colour card, then ran my Stampin Up ‘Daffodil Delight’ ink pad across it. I used my water-brush to even the colour a little – but not too much – dry the card, then die cut the word out. The little sentiment is from the same Newton’s Nook ‘Rainy Day’ stamp set. I thought the two worked together quite well.

As I am trying for more clean and simple cards, I left them at that. No embellishments, no added sequins – just as they were.

I will be entering a card for the following challenges:

Addicted to Clean and Simple

Crazy for Challenges

Make My Monday Challenge

Addicted to stamps

Crafty Catz weekly challenge

Colour Crazy Challenge

Crafty Friends Challenge

I thought I’d give you an update about my late, late, late Christmas presents for my friend, and one week late on the birthday card and presents – all received very gratefully and graciously! Thank goodness.

 

Adore you and smile

After a fairly decent day at work, I wanted to craft and play with some of my starry and shiny water colours.

Once again I have turned to the Altenew stamp set ‘I Adore you’ for a variation on a background. Again I stamped one image several times in Ranger Perfect Medium, and embossed the outline of the flowers with a copper embossing powder. I felt this particular flower had a lot of detail in it, and I liked the way it looked when stamped in different directions.

I also stamped some of the smaller flower/bud images in a couple of places where I felt it needed something extra, or there was too much white space. The flowers themselves I coloured in my Gansai Tambi starry colours to add some depth and sheen, using the white gold shade for  a lighter look which didn’t detract from the copper embossing on the flowers. I decided to change from colouring the background, and instead wanted the flowers themselves to be the centre of attention.

The sentiment is Altenew ‘Half Tone Smile’, stamped and embossed in copper, and cut out using the matching die, and added some sequins which seemed to match the colour tone, and one black jewel for the dot above the ‘i’.

I seem to be enjoying stamping and embossing at the moment, especially creating my own backgrounds, with a simple sentiment. Sometimes a card doesn’t have to say a lot to mean a lot. If you know what I mean.

I’ll be entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge, with a theme of Anything Goes.