Lavender Mixed Media Tutorial

Hello friends! I hope you are all well and healthy. These times are tough in the whole world and it is important to try to stay positive and not to panic. Crafting and getting out in nature are good ways to calm the mind, at least for me.

Today, I am sharing a mixed media lavender tutorial, with a piece of recycled cardboard as a base. You can turn it into a card instead, by just adhering the cardboard to folded cardstock. Or make a cardboard tag.

At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Stencil It theme and I hope you can join us. Don't miss the beautiful project by our March guest designer Ann Chuang. 

I was tidying up my desk when my eye fell upon this piece of cardboard and I decided to make something out of it right away. I wanted quite a bit of the raw cardboard to show, but I also wanted a smooth surface in the center which would work for some mixed media magic. Gesso was the answer to this. The Lavender stencil that I used is by Darkroom Door.

Start by removing some of the upper layer of the cardboard around the edges. Then apply gesso with a palette knife. Let it dry and add one or two more layers, so that you get a fairly smooth surface.

Apply texture paste through the Lavender Small stencil with a palette knife. Let dry.

Paint with watered down Shabby Shutters and a little Peeled Paint. I was aiming for a light look. Let dry.

Place the stencil back on the design and sponge two shades of purple through it with a small ink-blending tool.

Paint the stems green with a fine paint brush.

When the paint was dry, I added lines and highlights with a white gel pen.

Glossy Accents is one of my all-time favorites, but I hadn't used it for a while, so I decided to make the flowers glossy. Leave to dry.

I stamped sentiments from the Darkroom Door Nature Walk set.

Here you can see the effect of the white gel pen on the flowers. I also added some pearls.

I like the texture created where the gesso meets the cardboard. It is in fact my favorite part of this project.

The label was stamped with Simon Says Stamp Lavender ink using the new Darkroom Door Lots of Labels set, and the sentiment comes from the Make Art sentiment stamp, also by Darkroom Door.

It is difficult to capture the dimensional glossy surface on a photo, but I think you can see it better here. It's a fun addition to any stenciled design.

I was in the mood for a light shabby chic project this week. If you want to make a grungier version of this project, it is easy to do by, for example, adding brown paint around the edges and giving the lavender a dark shadow.

I hope you will join us this week in our Stencil It challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Poppy Watercolor Tutorial

Hello friends! Today I have a watercolor poppy tutorial to share with you, made using one of the beautiful Simon Says Stamp Suzy's Watercolor Prints. The prints are done on watercolor paper, so they are perfect for watercoloring. We will do an easy masking technique and also add some pen work.

This poppy print comes from the Suzy's Spring Flowers Watercolor Prints set and is such a pretty print and I also really like poppies. I turned my project into a wall-panel, but you can of course make a card instead or use it in your art journal. I used watercolor paint, but as an alternative you can use watercolor pencils, or smear Distress Ink on a craft sheet, mist with water and paint with a paint brush.

When you watercolor it is often a good idea to leave some of the paper white, as highlights and to create life. An easy way to do that is to use a masking pen. Add dots and lines with a Molotow Masking Pen and let dry. It dries quickly.

Mix up watercolor paint and start painting the flower. Make the petals darker towards the center.

Continue with the rest of the poppy and then paint the stems and bulbs. Use a dark grayish brown mix for the petals, with a lighter green area in the center.

Increase the shading if needed.

Paint the background in springtime shades of green and add darker brown to the ground.

When everything is dry, rub off the masking liquid with your finger to reveal the white areas underneath.

Splatter the page lightly with dark brown paint.

Add details and highlights with a black pen and a white gel pen. I also drew grass at the bottom of the page. If some details have disappeared when you painted, you can add them back with the black pen.

Distress the edges and mount on a second piece of watercolor paper and then on sanded blackout kraft stock paper. Finally everything was adhered to a piece of mat board, for stability.

You can se the pen work clearly in the center of the flower, where some of the lines weren't so visible any more.

The sentiment comes from the Paper Artsy Sunshine and Rain set by Alison Bomber. It also happens to be one of my favorite quotes.

Concentrate the splatters at the bottom of the page, where the shadows are deeper.

The panel is a great spring gift for someone and can spread some happiness.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Wildflowers Art Journal Page

Hello friends! What better way to start the week than with some stamping, watercoloring and art journaling.

 

I hope you had a good weekend! I had to take it a little easy since I have a cold and I missed my long walks. We played some Monopoly instead. I don't know how my eldest always manages to win at Monopoly. We have a South African version and it is fun to talk about the various places while playing. 

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog our theme is 'A Bit O' Green'. I love green and one of my favorite things with spring is how almost each day brings new shades of green. Don't miss the project by our March guest designer Ann Chuang. 

I was in the mood for art journaling and wanted to use the new beautiful Simon Says Stamp Stronger Together set. The stamp set was in the March card kits, but you can also get it on its own. I decided to stick to just watercolors, stamping and some Paper Artsy Infusions colored stains.

The technique works perfectly for cards too, just use a smaller paper and fewer of the stamps. It is best to work on watercolor paper.

Working on a cotton-rag watercolor page in my Dina Wakley Media Journal, I misted it heavily with water and then sprinkled in a tiny bit of Infusions powders. I have pierced a hole in the lid since you need so little powder. I used: Golden Sands, Emerald Isle and Olive Tree. Mist with more water to help the Infusions to blend. I dabbed off some of the brown pigment with a paper towel, to get a lighter look. This is a great background to start out from, it is interesting without being busy.

When dry, stamp flowers and leaves from Stronger Together on the page. I place a Sizzix cutting pad underneath the page to give me an even surface to stamp on. I still messed up some of the stamping, and added extra leaves to cover it up.

Mix two or three shades of green, a yellow green, a middle green and a darker cooler green. Paint the leaves, dropping in lighter and darker colors.

The flowers were painted with Cerulean blue, using more water for the lighter areas.

Paint a darker soil area at the bottom of the page and then splatter the background with the dark brown paint.

When everything was completely dry, I added details with a black pen and a white gel pen. You can also fill in some lines that have disappeared. The white pen works great when it comes to adding highlights.

Here's a close up where you can see my added black scribbles and the white lines and dots.

Painting on a tinted background gives a nice muted look to the watercolor paint, since the background shows through.

I just love the look of this type of fluid and transparent background.

The stamping on the flower to the left got messed up, so I stamped another leaf in front of the flower, covering up the area that did get stamped.

Adding strands of grass gives extra life to the page and helps to ground the flowers to the page.

I hope you will join us this week in our Bit O' Green challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Kindness Tag

Hi friends! Today I have a tutorial on the Simon Says Stamp Store blog, for a mixed media tag, with an important message. Here is a sneak peek:

I love to make die cuts a part of the background, by almost baking them into the background. If you touch the tag it doesn’t seem as if the die cuts have been glued onto the background, but more like they were there from the start. This works with almost any type of die and is very effective with detailed dies, such as the Rose Scribble Trio by Memory Box that I used here. I made a tag, but the techniques work just as well for cardmaking or art journaling.

You can find all the steps and details on the Simon Says Stamp blog.

Thank you so much for visiting today!

See you again tomorrow!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.