Watercolour Layers Tutorial

Hi and welcome!! I have a Sizzix tutorial to share with you today, made with Thinlits dies by Lori Whitlock and Rachel Bright. I was in the mood for watercolours and played around with Derwent's Inktense Blocks for this tutorial. 

I realised I hadn't really documented much about this pregnancy yet, except for now and then in a notebook. These photos were taken right after our container had been packed so I was pretty tired, but I wanted one last photo at this spot on the balcony. Lori Whitlock's Made with Love dies and Rachel Bright's Life Made Simple dies are great for layering and I aimed for a layered look on this layout. For a different example using Lori's dies, you can have a look at the Poetry Mini Book tutorial that I posted earlier this month. I made a layout today, but the techniques here work just as well for art journaling or cardmaking.

Start by die cutting three pieces with the Overall Patterns, Love and Stars sets. I die cut them from watercolour paper, but any cardstock will do. One of my favourite uses of dies is to make my own stencils, and that is exactly what these papers are going to be.

I worked on a 12 x 12 sheet of watercolour paper, since most watercolour techniques work best on watercolour paper. Place one stencil at a time on the background and apply Ranger's Texture Paste through it with a palette knife. Continue with the other stencils, and don't worry if it doesn't look perfect at this stage. Leave to dry.

Mix three colours Inktense blocks into a little bit of water, simply by stirring the block in the water. You can also use ordinary watercolour paints. Paint the background with clean water first, for a wet-on-wet effect.

Paint the Inktense mixes onto the background using a paint brush, and let them blend with each other. For the splatters, take an Inktense block and wet the end, flick paint off the end with a paint brush to create splatters. 

When the background is dry, stamp it here and there with a script stamp. This is one of my most used stamps by Hero Arts.

Die cut a large file folder, four smaller one and two tags from watercolour paper, using the Happy Days and Hello Life sets. This is the sandwich to use with these dies in your Big Shot (or Vagabond): Magnetic Platform, cutting pad, paper, die facing down, second cutting pad.

Time for more fun colouring. You can draw with the blocks right onto the background, like I did here. 

On the file folders and tags, draw with a white wax crayon around the edges on both sides of the folders. For a different variation on this technique, check out this tutorial of mine. 

Apply water with a paint brush to the large file folder (with the scribbled lines) to dissolve the paint. Paint the other folders and the tags with the paint you mixed earlier. Flick darker paint on them. The wax crayon will resist the ink and create cool distressed white borders.

Thinlits dies work great for die cutting photos, since you can see exactly where you place them. It works the best together with the Magnetic Platform which will hold the photo and die in place while you die cut. Sandwich: Magnetic Platform, cutting pad, photo facing up, second cutting pad.

The three sets by Lori Whitlock that I used for this tutorial, come with a large variety of smaller dies, shapes, borders and words, perfect for adding details and embellishments. 

Stamp the Looped Flower Pattern by Hero Arts on the hearts with embossing ink and heat emboss with white powder.

Wet a red Inktense block and apply directly onto the hearts. Wipe the paint off from the embossed parts, which will resist it.

Die cut a camera and some arrows from the watercolour paper. Leave the papers in the die and trace around some of the edges and shapes. This is a fun technique to use together with Thinlits dies.

Paint some details with red paint and add blue splatters to these playful shapes.

Die cut borders, clouds and tag toppers from old dictionary paper. Later, I also decided to die cut another two file folders from dictionary paper to add in between the watercolour layers.

Die cut words from black cardstock.

Glue everything down on the background. I particularly like how the splatters look on, together with the texture from the stenciled paste. 

Layer the large file folder and add a piece of the stencil from the first step on top, which is now covered with paste, giving it extra texture. Stamp sentiments on the tabs and layer together. Distress some of the edges. The journaling is on the two tags.

The dictionary page I used had definitions of various words starting with 'new'. I also glued down a few hearts and honeycombs which were leftover from the first step of die cutting the stencils.

The doodled and painted embellishments add a fun detail to the layout, and I felt that the layout needed more white too.

A fun little camera to document the moment.

Thank you so much for stopping by today!! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

Surfaces: Daler & Rowney Aquafine watercolour paper 140 lbs; Canson Montval 100lbs; old dictionary pages

Dies: Sizzix: Happy Day, Photo Love, Hello Life, Stars, Love, Overall Patterns

Stamps: Hero Arts: Looped Flower Pattern CG504, Time AC029, Favorite AC030, Old Letter CG197

Ink: Ranger Archival Ink: Jet Black

Paint: Derwent Inktense Blocks

Crayon: Caran D'Ache: Neocolor 1 Wax Pastels

Medium: Ranger: Texture Paste

12 tags of 2015 January

Hi friends!! Today I am happy to share my version of Tim Holtz 12 tags of 2015 January. I was sorry to miss the last couple of tags of 2014 because of the move, and I had fun doing this one.

Since most of January has already passed, I didn't do a new year's tag like Tim did; instead I made the coming addition to our family the theme of my tag. For the background, I used Barn Door and Spiced Marmalade Distress Paint, and misted with Pumice Stone Distress Spray Stain. The combination created a rich and distressed background.

I am still waiting for my supplies which are in the container, but luckily I did have Chit Chat stickers. I love them and made sure they made their way into the suitcase. The shading technique Tim did around the words is real cool. I also added a die cut flag that I happened to find in a bag of scraps (I had tossed two bags of scraps into the suitcase too).

I only had Rock Candy glitter at hand, so I painted all the plastic parts with Peacock Feathers and coated two of them with Rock Candy. The number was mounted on a painted, sanded and inked circle from the Prize Ribbons die.

My spritzer tool is also in the container, so after splattering with white paint, I made irregular dots with a gold Krylon marker.

 

Thank you so much for looking!

 

Happy crafting!

 

Anna-Karin

 

Supplies:

Surfaces: Ranger Manila Tag; Tim Holtz idea-ology: Postale tissue wrap

Dies: Sizzix: Prize Ribbons, Ribbon Flags

Ink: Distress Ink: Pumice Stone

Marker: Distress Marker: Black Soot; Krylon Gold Leafing Pen

Paint: Distress Paint: Barn Door, Spiced Marmalade, Peacock Feathers

Mist: Distress Spray Stain: Pumice Stone, Peacock Feathers

Glitter: Distress Glitter: Rock Candy

Embellishments: Tim Holtz idea-ology: Chit Chat Stickers, Sprocket Gears, Long Fasteners, Game Spinners, Alpha Parts, Crinkle Ribbon, Botanicals Remnant Rubs

 

Tuesday's Texture Featured Project

Hello all! Today I am very happy to be featured in Marjie Kemper's Tuesday's Texture series.

The Tuesday Texture series by Marjie is of course about texture, something that I love to create on my projects. Such a great idea for a series and you must check out the wonderful art projects that have been featured earlier in this series too. I was happy that Marjie wanted to feature this Frameworks Mosaic tutorial of mine, which is one of my favourite projects too.

Be sure to stop by Marjie's blog to read the post, and her kind words about my project. Thank you Marjie!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

A rainbow in someone's cloud

Hello friends! This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge we are having a cloud challenge. Such a fun theme! I love adding clouds to projects, and they often feature when I make various scenes. You can also be inspired by clouds, or the sky, etc., so there are lots of possibilities.

It is fun trying out various ways of depicting clouds on projects, such as their fluffy nature. On this layout, I made clouds in five different ways, most of them are done with cloud dies from Simon Says Stamp. There are misted clouds, heat embossed clouds, mica clouds, white paper clouds and old dictionary paper clouds. I aimed to extend the scene on the photo into the layout, which is done on Ranger's natural sticky-back canvas. The canvas was first soaked in water and then misted with Salty Ocean and Antique Linen Distress Spray Stains. I frayed the edges a little and glued it to a piece of cardstock to give it more stability. 

I used the Create a Scene stencil and inked through it to create the background clouds, once the background was dry. Some of the inked clouds were made darker than the others. I also added some favourite cloud quotes.

The mica clouds were die cut from white cardstock which had been covered with Scor-Tape. After die cutting, I removed the protector sheet and covered the clouds with Prima's Frosted Mica Flakes (which you might remember that I used to depict snow last week). The white clouds were heat embossed with white embossing powder, while the cloud bank was die cut from plain white paper. Between the sky and tree sections of the layout there is a piece of torn dictionary paper, which also resembles a cloud bank a little bit.

The variety of textures in the sky makes for an interesting look and you want to reach out and touch the layout. The word was also die cut with a Simon Says Stamp die. It is one of the word dies that I have used the most.

I used a stencil for the trees and misted through it with Gathered Twigs Distress Spray Stain. The little birds were die cut from dictionary paper, using a new sweet Songbird Branch die.

I also die cut a tree and a swing from white paper and added some stamped images and sentiments.

I hope you get a chance to join us this week! I am looking forward to seeing everyone's interpretations of the cloud theme. As every week, one random participant wins a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp.

 

Thank you for visiting today!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies: 

Surfaces: Ranger Natural Sticky-Back Canvas; Neenah Smooth Solar White Cardstock

Dies: Simon Says Stamp: Flat Bottom Clouds, Chevron Clouds, Cloud Bank, Songbird Branch, Woodland Tree, You

Stamps: Simon Says Stamp: This is the Life

Ink: Ranger Distress Ink: Salty Ocean, Stormy Sky; Ranger Archival Ink: Potting Soil, Manganese Blue

Embossing Powder: Ranger White

Mist: Ranger Distress Spray Stain: Antique Linen, Salty Ocean, Gathered Twigs

Stencil: Simon Says Stamp: Make a Scene; The Crafter's Workshop: Mini Branches Reversed

Embellishments: Prima: Frosted Mica Flakes; Tim Holtz idea-ology: Linen Ribbon

Adhesive: Scor-Pal: Scor-Tape 2 1/2

Good Things Mug

Hello all! Today I am sharing a tutorial that I made for the Eileen Hull Art With Heart Challenge. Our challenge during January is 'Fresh Ideas'. Remember that there is a great prize to be won, in fact it is the 3-D Oven die that I used just the other day. 

I made a coffee mug and a spoon using the Mug & Spoon and Make-it-3-D Box dies, for a fresh start of the day. It could be that I made this because I miss my coffee a little bit, since I am not drinking it at the moment. The Make-It-3-D die is great, since it will help you to turn a large range of dies and shapes into 3-D projects, something that I love making. I'll explain more about it below. Let's start.

 

First, die cut the Mug & Spoon from white mat board. You'll need two die cuts of the cup. 

The Make-It-3-D die contains three different shapes that will help you turn many different dies into a 3-D project. You can cut them a shorter, if they are too large for your project. For the coffee cup we'll use the shape to the right. The die scores it at different places, which means that depending on where you fold it, it will fit differently sized projects. The shape to the left creates a more square form, while the middle strip is great for projects which are more rounded, and thus need more score lines. 

I tore up pages from an old dictionary book and glued to the mug with multi medium. Avoid gluing it to the flaps to ensure that they will stick well to the mug. Add a layer of multi medium on top too, to make sure it is all glued down.

When the multi medium is dry, smear some gesso over the shapes, but let quite a bit of the text show through.

This is my favourite part of the mug. I embossed the base in the Waffle folder, which has a texture that I thought fit pretty well with coffee cups.

Paint the shapes with Antique Linen and Pumice Stone Distress Paint. 

Add Walnut Stain paint to deepen the brown shapes, focus especially on the edges. Try not to get the dark brown paint into the textures of the embossing, but just dry brush it on top.

Apply a strong adhesive on the flaps. I used Ranger's Wonder Tape. Assemble the cup.

The spoon was painted grey and then I covered it with a layer of Prima's Clear Crackle Texture Paste. Leave it to dry. When dry, you can add some brown paint here and there.

You can see the crackle texture a little better here.

Here you can see what the mug looks like from above. A perfect place for a little gift to someone.

I dyed a piece of lace with Antique Linen and Walnut Stain Distress Spray Stain and placed it at the joint between the embossed and the unembossed parts of the mug.

 

I stamped the mug with stamps from Hero Arts. The hearts and sentiments were stamped with Jet Black and the splatters with Potting Soil. 

The text in the background and the various paints gives the mug an interesting texture, and makes you think of coffee too. 

This is the back of the mug with another sentiment. 

 You could easily use other sentiments, and turn the mug into a birthday gift holder, for instance.

 I added stamping to the sides of the mug too.

The other side of the mug. Use different colours for a bright and happy start of the day mug.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:
Surfaces: Sizzix Little Sizzles White Mat Board; vintage dictionary paper
Dies: Sizzix: Mug & Spoon, Make-It-3-D Box
Embossing folder: Sizzix: Sunburst & Waffle
Stamps: Hero Arts: My Words CL695, Time AC029, My Notebook AC027
Ink: Ranger Archival Ink: Potting Soil, Jet Black
Paint: Distress Paint: Antique Linen, Pumice Stone, Walnut Stain
Medium: Ranger: Gloss Multi Medium, Dina Wakley White Gesso; Prime Texture Paste Clear Crackle
Mist: Distress Spray Stain: Antique Linen, Walnut Stain
Embellishments: lace