Hi Crafty Friends!
Today I am mixing it up on the Ellen Hutson Blog as well as the Honey Bee Stamps Blog with some beautiful stamps and dies from both companies!
For this card I am using the Bokeh Dots and Thankful stamps by Essentials By Ellen and the Kindness stamps and Kindness dies from Honey Bee Stamps.
I wanted to do a one layer card and keep things pretty simple so I decided to do some masking and embossing. I will never get tired of the impressive results of masking and the elegant touch of some gold embossing powder.
When creating several masks of the same image I like to double up on my masking paper and cut once. I stamped all of my images out on Eclipse masking paper and then adhered that piece on top of another piece of masking paper and then cut out. This saves time and if your cutting masks anyway you could always cut some for the next time!
I started out with some Neenah Desert storm cardstock cut to 5.5″ x 4.25″(I later trimmed this down slightly smaller to show the polka dot pattern) I stamped and embossed the large kindness sentiment and then masked and stamped the various images from the Thankful stamp set and the smaller sentiments from the kindness stamp set. I used versamark ink for the embossed sentiment and I used Versafine Vintage Sepia for the small sentiments and other images. The dark brown ink goes so well with the Desert Storm cardstock and was less harsh of a line than the Versafine Onyx black that I usually use. Finally I stamped the scattered dots from the Essentials by Ellen Bokeh stamp set with some Delicata Golden glitz ink.
After all that I was able to remove my layers of masking paper to reveal the finished stamped design! I love this part! I then colored all of the images in with my Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. These blend beautifully on this cardstock! The only time that I used my gamsol blending medium was around the Kindness sentiment, to add a shadow. I found that after I colored the images the brown lines became lighter and darker in spots. If I stamped over the images again the ink would not cover evenly because of the oil based pencil. So I took a matching colored pencil and went over all of the brown lines. (see photo below for comparison) This gave the image a cohesive look and evened out the color all the way around.
What a big difference, right? The color I used to match up with the Vintage Sepia colored in was the 9201 Polychromos Burnt Umber. I think that doing this made the images feel like one big stamp instead of several little stamps.
I did find that the Kindness sentiment got a little lost after all was done. To fix this I die cut the Kindness sentiment out using the dies by Honey Bee stamps. The die and the stamp are exactly the same size so I embossed the die with the same pale rich gold embossing powder and then adhered the die cut on top of the stamped image with Ranger Multi Medium Matte. Before I glued the die cut down I did shade with the same burnt umber pencil I was using, around the kindness sentiment… I blended that out lightly with some gamsol and a paper blending stump. I thought this gave just a bit more pop to the card.
I added the card panel to a piece of gold and brown polka dot paper from Echo Park and then glued that to a A-2 card base made from the same Neenah Desert Storm cardstock.
I really enjoyed coloring this card. I need to give my colored pencils some more love. I was pleasantly surprised how bright the colors showed on the kraft colored cardstock.
Head on over to the Honey Bee Stamps blog and the Ellen Hutson Blog for more inspiration and a chance to win a great prize!
For a list of products used and links please see my list below. (affiliate links used at no additional cost to you)
Supplies Used:
Faber Castell Polychromos Color Pencil Set – Tin of 120
I started out buying the pencils open stock, However if I had to do it all over again I would have got the full set because it saves in the long run, especially when on sale!
Thank you so much for stopping by! Check back next week for some fun new surprises!
Happy Crafting!
Taniesa Vlasak | The Crafty Pickle 