Don't Whine..Use Twine!..The Twinery and Serendipity Stamps Blog Hop

Do you get bored with the same embellishments?

An embellishment that I enjoy using is twine. Here are some examples of ways to use twine, all used with Serendipity Stamps and twine from The Twinery.

When I was asked to take part in this blog hop, I could not resist!

I love nautical themes, lighthouses and die so what is not to love about the new Serendipity Stamps

lighthouse die and stamps set? It is so simple to cut a backing for the lighthouse with whatever color you want your stripes to be. 

Below, you can see that I have used twine as edging and as an embellishment (netting that I made with the solid natural twine) on this side step card.

Here is another nautical themed card where I used twine as edging, as an embellishment for a stamped image (on the sailboat) and as a closure.

 It would look nice to place eyelets in the holes for the closure, but I thought of that after photographing the card.

 As you open the card (kind of a diorama), you can see another use of twine to create a lifesaver as well as the hand tied netting like on the previous card.

Another theme that I think works very well with twine is sewing. Here the edging is a blanket stitch around the card. I also embellished the stamped images such as the spool of thread, quilted heart as well as adding twine to the die cut "Hello" and actual buttons used on the heart.

All three of these cards use my favorite coloring medium, watercolor. To create paper that would match my quilted heart on the card above, I did a wet on wet wash using the same colors and then die cut the Hello from that paper.



While you can use twine on most any card or scrapbook layout, I think it works great with the nautical and sewing themes.



In addition to the Lighthouse set from Serendipity Stamps, I used Whelk Shell Small, Joy is a Net, Hello die, Sewing and Quilted Hearts Set. In addition to the natural solid twine, I used Midnight blue stripe, Maraschino Solid, Honeydew Stripe, Blossom Stripe and Lilac Stripe.


As with most blog hops, there are PRIZES! Visit the Serendipity Stamps Facebook page, The Serendipity Stamps Blog and The Twinery Blog for details!

Hope you enjoyed seeing these ideas of ways to use twines! Be sure to click on the links below and stop by all the other blogs participating in the blog hop today:



The Twinery

Serendipity Stamps 

Jeanne Jachna

Tobi Crawford

Denise Hahn 

Sue Eldred

DoBea Alberts

Kathie Bailey

Jennifer Cuthbertson

Bridgit Edblom

Holly Craft (that is where you are)


If you are going in order visiting the blog hop posts, your next visit will be Denise Hahn listed above.

Thanks for stopping by! I can't wait to see all the ways to use twine that will be featured in this blog hop!

Holly

Watercolor tricks for Papercrafters, using Serendipity Stamps

It's that time of year again....time for the new fall and winter stamps to begin coming out...so exciting! Of course, some images just call for the watercolor brush to come out of hiding!

I love using markers, but I still love even more the looks possible and speed of using watercolor.

 I thought I would go over some tricks of watercolor while showing you these great new images from Serendipity Stamps. I also used Spellbinders Die to cut out a couple of the images. Notice the clean little border around the diecut? This is a fun edge I did by applying embossing ink to the actual die and then diecutting the image. Afterwards, I applied clear embossing powder to the edge and hit it with the heat gun. The clear embossing powder masks the delicate edge and keeps watercolor away, while also giving a nice little sheen. I can work very quickly wet into wet to create a very cool background.
Another trick I did on the background was to apply a little paint with a sheen and then I sprinkled some table salt over the wet watercolor. Allow the paint to dry and then brush off the salt. It will create a great mottled effect. Once the cards were finished, I spattered some of the pearl color paint with a sheen over the image. Lots of things happening there, but all of them were easy and quick.

 On the ghost and quail, I also did some water embossing by manipulating the watercolor paper. I outlined the area I wanted to puff out with a stylus on the image, placing the image on something soft like a mouse pad or piece of fun foam. On the reverse side of the image, you can see the outline. I applied water to the back and then manipulated the paper with the stylus. To keep the "puffiness", I used foam adhesive tape in the raised areas. Notice that the quail image was torn out and spattering applied using brown paint. This gives a more rustic look.

 To make the pumpkin pop, I applied some glossy accents and allowed it to dry. Also, a little glitter was added to the spider, bat and face of the ghost.

 Here are a couple shots showing the cutting side of the Spellbinders die. The VersaMark ink was applied directly to the cutting side of the die and then clear embossing powder added to the cut out images. But don't throw away the outside portion...below, you can see that I applied gold embossing powder and will use this for another project.

 Watercolor paint with a sheen is a great accent like on the window and snow above. I prefer to use it in limited amounts, only on what I want to really stand out.
Another way to make an image pop is to layer a portion of the image. Below, I stamped extras of the hand with the watering can, hat, face and scarf. I used pop dots to add dimension between the layers.

The sun was really bright when I took the photos below, so the colors are a little washed out compared to real life, but hopefully you will enjoy seeing the great new images as well as try some of the watercolor techniques I have included. Just do a search on my blog to see more posts on watercolor techniques.

Serendipity also has great word stamps to go with these images, but I wanted to focus on the new images and some watercolor techniques. Enjoy! Wow, I haven't even pulled out the watercolor crayons yet....or the Copic markers! So many possibilities! Oh, and I just saw on the Serendipity website that they are offering free shipping on orders over $10....whooo hooo! I love free shipping!

Life is not always a day at the Beach

The stamp above is the Cape Lookout Lighthouse that I missed while in the Outer Banks and vow that I have to go back to see! As Jan, one of my readers commented, I now have the stamp so I have to go see it. I like her reasoning! LOL!
This is one of the Impression Obsession stamps I purchased during their sale (as is the verse stamp). My husband's office often asks me to make a card to send around the office for someone and this is one of those. It is for a man who is in the hospital due to an infection. I will often have several pages in the card as seen below, so there is plenty of room for everyone to sign.

The stamps above are Inkadinkado.

Just trying to put some of my new stamps to use!

Pine Cone Watercolor Card

I like to keep up with what is going on in the stamping world, so I was looking around at the new website for Serendipity Stamps yesterday and saw this image that I had but had not used. I decided to take a moment and do a holly project. A holly project is one that I want to do, just because I want to do it! Most of my time is spent working on projects for EK Success Brands, for which I feel so fortunate, but once in a while I do something with an image or product just to have fun. Those are the ones I can post on my blog, whereas the ones I am doing for the CAT (Creative Artist Team) for EK Success, I can not as they are for specific purposes. That is one reason I have had less paper crafting here on the blog. With my work, walking, going to WW and various other projects I find myself involved in (like making twenty recipes of my broccoli casserole recipe last Saturday for a benefit dinner)....as well as a few trips thrown in here and there.....I stay pretty busy!

Anyway, I love nature, so I loved this image of a pine cone in a basket and a couple of pecans still in their hulls. I also love watercolor, so that was my technique for coloring the image. I stamped the image in black with a waterproof ink and then painted the watercolor, working from pot paints. You can even use the Crayola sets of paints if that is all you have. It is important to work on watercolor paper. I added some shading and some spattering.

I also did some "paper shaping" or water embossing, making the pecans and some of the thingys on the pine cone stand out. I simply used a stylus to trace the parts I wanted to emboss, with the stamped and painted image lying on a mouse pad or fun foam. Flipped the image over and then embossed more within the traced lines. It manipulates the fibers of the watercolor paper and makes the pecans look more three dimensional. I love to use the EK Empressor for shaping the paper, once the tracing has been done.

I accented the card with some torn paper which had been distressed. The card is card stock from my favorite Tim Coffey autumn paper pad from K & Company (I never can get away from EK Success Brands as I love their products....makes it nice working for them!) and those little wood pieces that I found in the floral department at Walmart.

I love Serendipity Stamps and have for years....be sure to go check out her new website. I think I have some Inkadinkado stamps that I want to do a holly project with also, but I think that I will share some Perler tips first....tomorrow!

Adding Sparkle to Watercolor

I played with the curves feature on Picnik and think I have these photos so you can see the sparkle that you can add to watercolor. These were all stamped with watercolor crayons (don't worry, I will take some photos of that process or find some I have posted before....with this new computer I do not have easy access to all the thousands of photos that I burdened my old computer with!). With ink sometimes the detail of the image can take over. Even solid stamps are sometimes good with watercolor crayons as you can get the mottled effect that makes the pigment look like fur on the pandas (thanks, Marian, for letting me know what kind of bears they were...I saw so many bears this summer, I can barely remember the types!).

For the nest and eggs, I added sparkle to just a few of the twigs making the nest and then completely on the eggs as they are the focal point.

On each of these, I also used a sparkly paper mat to carry that sparkle look even further. On the koala stamp, only the bamboo leaves have a touch of sparkle, as for the fur, you want more texture than sparkle.

Notice how I filled the space left by the circular cut with three eyelets. It is in a position where a chop would be placed and it echos the circles going back beyond the image. Do I think and analyze these things as I am doing them....of course not. But I can break them down later and figure out why I like what I did and why it works. All I knew was that something needed to be there!

I love the detail in the bird image above. Sparkly paint was added to most of the image with the exception of the black feathers. Guess I was just in a sparkly mood this day.

With the tulips, notice how I did the 3 D technique on the vase. Since only the outline of the vase was on the stamp, I had to fill in the solid portion. Something else I did with this one was that I spattered with gold sparkly paint. You can tell that it was a little thick. I also added a cast shadow under the tulips where the vase would have shadows on them.

Remember the pearlex powders we all had to have? You can actually make them into sparkly paint. Watercolor paints are pigment with a binder added to make it stick to the paper. You can buy gum arabic in a liquid form in the fine arts aisle and powdered gum arabic at some stamp stores. You mix about four parts pigment with about one part gum arabic. Add a little water if you are using powder (or if you need more liquid to mix the liquid gum arabic) and mix well in a little container or on a paint pot container. Allow to dry and you will have created your own sparkly paint.

I am heading to the windy city on Sunday and have a busy, busy weekend before then. We have a meeting at church, I teach at Binders Saturday morning and am going to the Braves game Saturday afternoon. Sunday after church, we leave for Chicago for a week, so it might be a few days before you hear from me. If I can I might post some photos from Chicago of the city I love, but whose politics I don't love! I have to stay away from that double stuffed crust Chicago pizza, something I do love!

Applying Special Effects to Watercolor

In addition to adding salt, there are several ways you can bling up your watercolors. The Halloween image has several, almost making it gaudy, but then, Halloween often is...maybe that is why I like it, fun and gaudy!

You can see the background was done wet into wet, with colors mixing. While the wash was wet, salt was added so you can see little white spots where the salt absorbed the pigment.

Also used was water embossing, on their candy containers. Then to make them stand out even more, I added the clear shiny dimensional stuff....there are several brands. That makes them really stand out.

Also, on the "vapors" slinking it's way through the trick or treaters, I added glitter glue. I think glitter is such a great addition in small doses. Usually in life, I adhere to the philosophy that more is better but with glitter, I believe less is more. Just like powdered pigments, it can be overdone.

Speaking of powdered pigments (sparkly paints), I have several examples of those, but they are hard to photograph and capture that sparkle. Some people like to paint the entire image in sparkly paints, but I prefer to begin with a base of regular paint and then add the sparkle as an accent.

The owl's eyes were water embossed and then dimensional glaze added. This stuff works great for anything that would reflect light, producing a shine. I had forgotten about that darling little owl punch that also embosses. I am going to have to get him out to go with the new owl stamp I ordered this week from Inkadinkado. You know, EK Success Brands has a new website where you can shop from all the EK Success brands at once. www.eksuccessbrands.com.
The owl is from Martha Stewart Crafts, which is one of the EK Success Brands. They do, by far, make the BEST punches!

The violets above and morning glories below were both done with watercolor crayons. That adds to a softer look than stamping with ink. In the center of the violets, I added a touch of glitter glue for the flower centers. You can also see some more spattering.

You might have to click on the photo of the morning glory to see the drops of dimensional glaze stuff to look like dew drops.

Again, all these images are from Serendipity Stamps. Let me know if you have any questions. I like to have comments and I can always count on my friend, Jan Castle, to leave a comment. She is a wonderful artists and wins enough ribbons at the fair that I tell her that she could wallpaper with them! We have never met in person, but feel like we know each other! Thanks, Jan!

Watercolor - Spattering

Another look of watercolor that I really like is that of spattering. Spattered paint makes those little dots you often see on paintings. There have been tools made specifically for spattering or some people like to use an old toothbrush, but I find that a paint brush is always near by if you are painting, so why not use it? I just dilute the paint in the brush and tap it on another brush as seen above. On this example, I am spattering into a wet wash, so I am actually working wet into wet. When two colors get together in the soup, they become friends and mingle. Thus, the spatter you end up with will be soft over the wet areas and hard over the dry areas.

Above is an example of the difference. I usually do spattering as sometimes the wet spattering gets a little out of control just as it did above! Those party animals! Until you get used to spattering, you might want to test your paint over on scrap piece of paper. How much water is in the paint. how hard you hit the brush, how close you are to the painting...these are all factors with how your spattering will turn out.

I delved into my box of cards I had that I made with previous Serendipity Stamps to get some more examples. Pulling these out was like getting reacquainted with old friends! With many of these cards, I remember exactly where I was when I made those cards. These two cards actually were published in an article about watercolor. The dandelion stamp was stamped with brown ink rather than black and the pussy willows were stamped using watercolor crayons rather than ink. They are both good examples of spattering. I love spattering with things from nature.

You probably cannot tell but on both of these, I did water embossing on the dandelion blossom, the seed pod and on the pussy willows in the forefront. It is a very effective technique on both of these subjects. While on my trip this summer, I saw the largest dandelions I have ever seen in my life and I also saw pussy willows growing in Canada. Joyce kept photographing the dandelions and I was making fun of her taking photos of a weed. Eventually I succumbed and took some also and she considered it a personal victory! :-) We saw the seed things a big as tennis balls!

These are also good example of cast shadows. Using a cool very faint blue, I came in and silhouetted the stems with paint. Unfortunately, the shadow was still wet when I spattered, as you can see that the brown spatter made itself at home in that shadow. That is okay...it is watercolor!

I love the variation of tones you get with the watercolor crayons. With the dandelion, I love the detail you get with Versafine ink. Thus, it is hard to set hard fast rules to tell you when to use which. Often I will try both and see which I like best. Another good thing about watercolor paper is that you can flip it over and use the other side!

I am planning on heading over to Alabama this weekend to see the kids. We aren't all together at once very often any more, so it will be a treat. I just have to get my husband home from his mother's first. She had surgery this week and he is over there in SC seeing to her. Speaking of surgery, my sister also had surgery this week on her rotator cuff. She probably won't be able to read this with her sling, but giving a shout out to Lisa (yeah, the one I gave dogfood to and told her they were fritos...in a fritos bag). No wonder she was so mean to me!

Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend. I probably won't be able to post until I get back, so you have the weekend to practice your water coloring!

Watercolor - Creating a 3D look

3D movies are all the rage it seems. Personally, I am not willing to pay the extra $ for 3D, but with watercolor, you can get the look for free!

Above is one of our pumpkins that we water embossed (or applied Paper Shaping technique as reader Jan suggested). It has dried and is still "puffed". So how can we color it to add to the 3D look? You will see this technique used a lot in all the Copic coloring examples, but it has been around long before Copics. When something is closer to you or out where it can catch the light, there will be highlights. This area will be lighter. Areas that are further away, back in the shadows, will be darker. So if we apply these principles, our artwork will look more realistic.

Begin by painting clean water (remember to have TWO water containers) over the entire area you are coloring (here that would be the pumpkin). Next add pigment to the outskirts or boundaries of the area.

Without adding more pigment, begin pulling that original color over to the highlighted areas. See above how the closest part of the pumpkin is lighter? It amplifies the rounded look.

On something that is segmented like a pumpkin, you can actually create highlights on individual sections, having the shadows between each section. Not sure that my example above turned out so great, but hopefully, you get the idea.

Another way to create a 3D look is to add shadows. I think shadows deserve their own post, however......after all, according to my daughter, I am the "Shadow Queen"....and who knows what lurks in the hearts and minds of man?....The shadow does!

Watercolor - Drybrush

In the last year, I have shared with you photos of old barns that I have seen along the roadways. I remember one barn in SC that had a big wreath up on it and one locally that had an old truck in the barn. So, you know this stamp was one of my favorites. Barn wood is a perfect opportunity to use another watercolor technique called dry brush. Yesterday, we worked wet into wet, but today, you work over a wash (after it dries) with a brush that has pigment on it but very little water.

Apply paint to your brush and use a paper towel or tissue at the base of the brush to wick up the water in the brush. Then take the brush to the areas that you want to create a wood grain look and apply the pigment to the paper.You can even spread the bristles of the brush out for even more dry brush look. The texture of the paper works to your advantage as it gives you that rough look of barn wood.

Add a clear shiny dimensional application (like Diamond Glaze or Crystal Lacquer) on the windshield, windows and headlights once the painting is all finished and it is really cool! Here again, I could not decide which colors I wanted to go with, so I did two different combinations.