JB2611: Ombre Wonderland

This fortnight at Jingle Belles, we're asking you to walk in an Ombré Wonderland with us, by creating a card that features an Ombré blend. Ombré is literally French for "shaded"; a gradient effect where colors smoothly blend into each other, usually transitioning from light to dark or between different hues. 

When I found a white-embossed snowflake panel in my UFOs box, I immediately knew it'd make the perfect start to an ombre emboss/resist background. I blended four shades of Simon Hurley pink inks (Piggyback, Rosy Cheeks, Stupid Cupid and Prom Queen) over the embossing; added some Eyelet Outlet Snowflake Brads and then loaded on lots of adorable Doodlebug Design stickers. Job done!

JB2611: Ombre Wonderland runs until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, June 3rd. Hop over to Jingle Belles to link your Ombre Offerings!

Flowery Bags Are My Bag, Baby!

I have always loved elaborate giftwrapping, stencils and inks... so here's a post that combines all of the above:

I used an ancient hollyhocks stencil on an 8 x10"(ish) white gift bag from the big box store. I applied Simon Hurley's pale pink Rosy Cheeks dye ink from Ranger to the entire flower and blended some darker pink Prom Queen into the centers. 

To make the flowers stand out more prominently, I put a soft shadow to the righthand side of each stalk with a medium grey brushmarker, then added messy outlines with a Letter It Fineliner. Sunflower Stickles centers and a scattering of Eyelet Outlet Clear Jewel Bling; because let's face it, a little bling is almost ALWAYS a good idea!

Pink ribbon, white tulle, a sparkly butterfly and a card with a coordinating envelope complete this Mother's Day gift bag design.

Ornament-al Mandala Monday

My mom and I always decorate the Vintage Ornament Tree on Thanksgiving weekend* and of course it reminded me how much I love Christmas ornaments generally, vintage ones specifically, and whimsical zendoodle ones in my imagination!

I used my Letter It Fineliners to create all the shapes and doodles; and my Simon Hurley Stellar Inks with a waterbrush to add the bold, saturated color.

I hope your December is off to a good start and that it'll just keep getting better!

*The tree is artificial, bought several years ago during a BIG Black Friday sale at Balsam Hill, so there are no worries about it lasting until January; btw, we do also get a real tree in December because who can resist the scent?! 

Pink + Orange = Joy

Here's a Mandala that is perfectly flat but also (...strangely enough...) has about five layers, which I'll attempt to describe below.  

Layer 1: The color. I smooshed some Simon Hurley Stellar Inks (Prom Queen, Guppy and Shooting Star) onto my craft sheet, misted with isopropyl alcohol, then picked up the color with the cardstock panel. This layer, in itself, is arguably multiple layers, as I applied each color more than once, sometimes flicked a diluted color onto the wet design, and even dried the paper a couple of times in between shades so they wouldn't dilute.

Layer 2: The hearts. Simon Hurley Happy Hearts Stencil applied pretty lightly in Bee Sting and Guppy; later I toned down a few of the hearts in the background even more with a little bit of Dina Wakley White Gesso.

Layer 3: The grungy bits. Ancient rub-on transfers, mostly white ones, a few with hints of pink or green. Some of them rubbed-on imperfectly due to age; some rubbed on quite neatly and I scraped bits off when they interfered with...

Layer 4: The mandalas! I used my medium tipped black Letter It Fineliner and the Helix Circlemaker for this step. I usually start by drawing the main shapes (circles, big petals) so I can see how much room the primary design will take up; then I come back in and add the details: veins and scallops and stitch marks, oh my!

Layer 5: The details. This is where I selectively applied the gesso I mentioned in Layer 2; mostly to the outlying pink hearts, which were a bit distracting in their full-color state; I also added a bit to the edges of the panel. At the very end, I flicked some White Gloss Spray on top. Before adding the mandala to an A7 card base, I matted it on orange glitter cardstock and machine-stitched around the edges.

And there you have it: a flat card with lots of layers, guaranteed to add a little sunshine to any mailbox! 

Fur Babies and Rub-On Transfers

It's always fun to combine old and new supplies, right? This page in my Dina Wakley Ledger Journal features Dina's Circle Furbabies Stamp Set, stamped in rich brown Weeping Willow Stellar Ink from Simon Hurley; then adorned with every fall shade of ancient rub-on in my (considerable) collection!

The best part about a slightly messy collage format is that when using really old rub-on transfers you never quite know if they'll rub on perfectly, imperfectly or sometimes not at all... and this sort of configuration is quite forgiving no matter what happens.

For the record, most of these transfers were of the modestly priced, no-name variety; and yet, unlike some newer, higher-priced, fancier brands in my stash, they went on really nicely, with no flaking and very few imperfections!

Uno Mas

Technically ICAD ended on July 31st, but I couldn't resist making one last index card mandala for my 2025 collection!

I (sequentially) smooshed a few favorite shades of Simon Hurley STELLAR Inks from Ranger onto my craft sheet, misted them with isopropyl alcohol* and picked up the ink with an unlined index card. When I had covered the card in a tie-dye-ish series of colors, I dried it with my heat tool and then added outlines with my Letter It Fineliners and details with a white Posca pen. 

*Simon's STELLAR inks are water-based, but something I learned from the very clever and always inspiring Wendy Vecchi is that using rubbing alcohol to "watercolor" with dye based inks works pretty much exactly the same as using water, except the alcohol will not warp or pill your cardstock, no matter how wet you get it! Thanks, Wendy!!! ♥

ICAD: Final Three

Hard to believe that sixty-one days have elapsed since June first when the Index Card a Day Challenge began, but the calendar indicates that is indeed the case, which means it's time to say one more giant THANK YOU to Tammy Garcia, who devised ICAD in 2011 and continues to serve as hostess, inspiration and cheerleader every June and July as we embark on our yearly quest to make art on index cards, every day, for two months! 

Day 61: Love or Wish

It's the final day of #dyicad2025 and the optional prompt is #LOVE or #WISH which is perfect because I'd like to send my LOVE to @gypsy999 aka our hostess Tammy; to all of my fellow ICADians and ICADettes; as well as all who followed along on this, my 13th year of Index Card a Day; I'm already looking forward to next year! My WISH for all the artists and makers is that you will keep painting, drawing, stamping, coloring, collaging, lettering, stitching... whatever; make time for creativity and fun, even if it's only a few minutes each day, you deserve it!

Day 60: Marquee

Nothing but a single (#marquee style!) THANKS stamp, some whimsical puffy stickers and five bold shades of Simon Hurley STELLAR Inks on the penultimate day of #dyicad2025 because I wanted this one to be about thanking all the ICADians and ICADettes for sharing their art and their comments and generally making this the best June and July ever. Of course the biggest shoutout goes to our hostess and inspiration Tammy Garcia aka #gypsy999 who devised this super summer shindig in 2011 and has been rockin’ it every summer since. THANKS Missus! ♥

Day 59: Upside Down

I'm off-prompt, but as I took this photo it occurred to me that my three-stencil + doodles card is (unintentionally) about as conclusively non-directional as it could possibly be; and thus virtually incapable of being #UPSIDEDOWN which I find sort of low-key amusing... 

♥♥♥

ICAD (again!)

Rounding up the last full week of Index Card a Day, and here are the cards from the week that was: 

Day 58: Mandala Monday

I don't know why this particular brand of index card divider gives a sort of mottled effect when you apply/blend inks directly onto it, and I found that disconcerting at first, but if definitely adds another dimension to a super-inky design! In this case, the inks are the new Simon Hurley STELLAR Foam Ink Pads, which I applied in concentric circles with a Ranger Mini Ink Blending Tool. Design elements added with black Letter It Fineliners; details with a white Posca Paint Pen.

Day 57: One Staple Collage

Off-prompt with a One Staple Collage featuring Edgar Allan Poe. This one took longer to arrange than most, but I like how it (FINALLY!) turned out.

Day 56: Off-Prompt

Splitting the difference between an ogee pattern and florals, here are inky circles surrounded by brush-marker swipes and loose outlines. Simon Hurley Stellar Ink in "Prom Queen"; Tombow Dual Brush Pens in various shades of pink, orange and yellow; Letter It Fineliner (.04) in black.

Day 55: Cloverleaf or Roundabout

As anyone whose ever flown into or out of Newark Liberty Airport will tell you, New Jersey boasts many examples of both cloverleaf and roundabout traffic patterns. Here is my artists' impression of one such. In green. Which... irl they usually are not...

Day 54: River

Super-simple, very pared down version of a river featuring torn cardstock and machine stitching. Because I am emphatically NOT a minimalist, this design took me much, MUCH longer than something complicated would have done, lol. But I love the result.

Day 53: Ogee or Paisley (Part 2)

Because honestly, who can choose JUST Ogee or Paisley... I love both, so I did a version of each on successive days. This is (I hope it's obvious!!!) the Paisley one.

Day 52: Ogee or Paisley (Part 1)

The Ogee pattern is something I learned a few years ago during #ICAD and have enjoyed creating ever since! This version was rendered with Tombows; outlines and details added with Letter It Fineliners. PS: I find a gridded index card MOST helpful for making vaguely symmetrical patterns.

♥♥♥

ICAD Because I Can

Another week of making art on index cards looked a bit like this. Check out the ICAD Base Page on the Daisy Yellow website for prompts and info about this 61-day challenge; or visit @indexcardaday on Instagram. 

Day 51: Whole Lotta Lotus Mandala Monday

Not the fanciest mandala I've ever drawn but I definitely feel like I can now draw a lotus anytime, anyplace, for absolutely any reason... or no reason at all. Wahey!

Day 50: Clouds

 I adorned an unlined index card with loose random watercolor blotches by smooshing Simon Hurley’s luscious new Stellar Foam Ink Pads from Ranger onto my craft sheet, spritzing, dipping the card into the ink, and letting the colors dry. Later I went back with Letter It Fineliners to “find” the clouds and added lots of fun doodles with my Posca paint pens.

Day 49: Connection

It's a two-index-card layered collage creation in which each level is ok on its own… but they’re better (imo) together!

Day 48: Taxi 

I was thinking (again) about placing text on different angles and axises and had a bit of a play with some ancient vinyl letter stickers... which then essentially got completely covered up by the adorable children's dictionary #taxi illustration.

   

Day 47: Off-Prompt

This is my version of a cool flower zendoodle that I spotted online somewhere and apparently didn't save the info for (sorry!) There is quite a bit of pale pink shading IRL that doesn't show up in the pic and I am not sure about the vast amount of white space but... it was fun to draw and chalks off another day of ICAD!

Day 46: Pivot 

Here's a card that did not come out the way I thought it would; I was basically trying to #pivot the heart and background to be interestingly contrasting on each side and... well... it's definitely quite flowery, lol!!! :)

Day 45: Terra Cotta

I started out with the intention of finding/mixing the best/closest shade to a true terra cotta using my Tombow Dual Brush Pens and a waterbrush; but as I was playing with the colors I started being interested in all the variations and the way the component shades of orange, tan, pink, beige and brown worked together, so it veered a bit into Deconstructed Terra Cotta... with doodley flower(ish) shapes.

♥♥♥

Wishing you a wonderful, productive and creative week!

Mandala Monday (on an index card)

It's June 2nd, which makes this the first Mandala Monday of #ICAD2025 as well as the first (very quick lol) Index Card a Day Round-Up.

Day 2: Mandala Monday

A rainbow of blended Simon Hurley Dye Inks on an appropriately "artsy" library catalog card (thank you @millwoodstudioart Mary!) with (mostly) symmetrical rings on top via Letter It Fineliners and a white Posca paint pen.

Day 1: Glimmer

Stars glimmer in the night sky; the fish has a glimmer in his eye! Magazine collage (and some sparkly stickers) on a gridded index card.

Day 0: Title Card

Collage of torn paper, vintage trading stamps, wide washi tape, and a flower from a junk mail catalog.

ICAD 2025 Book

Washi tape, rub-on transfers and some of @ginaisarty 's beautiful elephants on my single ring, homemade ICAD book.

JB2507: Flat Feliz Navidad (week 2)

It's the second week of "Flat Feliz Navidad" at Jingle Belles so we are still making one-layer Christmas Cards; a feat which is more challenging for some (like ME!) than it is for others (like Stephanie, who is great at it). Here's what I made this week:

I'm currently a little obsessed with had Simon Hurley's create Sketched Snowmen stamp set and Simon's Dye Inks from Ranger. Luckily these were perfect for watercoloring the images and background. I embossed the snowmen and sentiment in black; then embossed the snowflakes in white; colored everything in... et voila! I confess that while I love how it came out, my natural instinct is still to make this a panel on a layered card with machine-stitching and maybe some brads; but I'm resisting. (For now!)

Head on over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's card and link your own Single Layer Masterpiece. JB2507: Flat Feliz Navidad runs until next Wednesday evening, April 9th.

MM13: Sew Far, Sew Good

It's a quilt-inspired Mandala Monday, featuring a doodley, but somewhat symmetrical mandala watercolored with my Simon Hurley Dye Inks and then outlined with Ranger's Letter It Fineliners.

I started out with just cutting it into four squares, but... then I went a bit further by making triangular cuts...

Then I took the outer triangles and split them one more time!

And finally, I used a tape runner to tack the centers of each segment onto a backing panel, so I could machine-stitch around all of the main perimeters.

Of course I can never resist a photo with the resplendent 1970's avocado green Sears Kenmore sewing machine which formerly belonged to my Mom Mom; my mother loving lugged this baby all the way home from Florida for me 20+ years ago and I have loved using it ever since! ♥♥♥

Dyamond Board Doodle Trees

It's a TREE-mendous Mandala Monday featuring a terrific TREE-o of Dylusions Dyamond Board Small Trees, doodled with Letter It Fineliners and then tinted with all my favorite green shades of Simon Hurley create Dye Inks. 

To make the trees into a card, I embossed Simon's Stitched Snowflakes background with Ranger's Cottontail Embossing Powder, applied Breakup Blue ink on top, then cleaned the excess ink off the embossed flakes.

A mat of dark blue cardstock, a sentiment from the Sketched Snowmen stamp set, and a little machine stitching complete the design.

As we cruise into the final full week of holiday preparations, I hope you're having fun getting ready for the big day (if you celebrate Christmas) or the big night (if you celebrate Hanukkah)!

SOS535: Masculine Cards

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that Guy Cards are harder to make than Girl Cards. Or at least many cardmakers (including ME!) think so. So this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash we're challenging you to make a masculine card for any occasion you'd like, I needed a birthday card, so that's what I made.

One of my additional goals on this outing was to combine an inky stamped/stenciled background with collage elements. Because I've noticed that I either do ALL collage or all inky goodness; and I quite like the way other people (including my current Art Crush Katie Pertiet) put them together. I've used a bunch of neglected stash items on this one including Simon Hurley's Leaf Prints stamps (about a year old) and Handwritten background (maybe two years); Letter It's Alternating Chevrons stencil (maybe three years); some 49 and Market Acetate Leaves and Vellum Leaf Stickers (two years?); lots of vintage sheet music, book paper, a chart from a map and some fab trading stamps, plus a vintage car illustration; and possibly my all-time favorite crafting supply that ISN'T technically a craft supply: Drywall Tape! The sentiment is part rub-on transfer and part wordfetti sticker... the latter is five or six years old. I'm a little bit proud that I managed to squeeze alllllllllllllllll of that onto an A6 card and I still left some white showing in the background.

SOS's Masculine Challenge runs through Monday evening, December 2nd. Check out the fab makes by our Crew at Shopping Our Stash then start planning what you'll link up with us!

Wavy Gravy Weekend

Here are a couple of funky watercolor panels that are almost too simple to post but... I did use my Simon Hurley Dye Ink pads in a new way and I so enjoyed making them, I figured I'd just roll with it. The "new" inking technique is basically just a funky version of the good old Direct to Paper method: I chose a bunch of analogous colors, then used the corners of each to draw a swoosh across the paper. I experimented with more/less pressure, and varied the angle at which I held the ink pads against the paper to see what sort of marks could be made. When I had a "base" of color... (there were still white areas of paper showing, but the basic idea and shapes were there) ...I took a waterbrush and dragged the colors into, around, and over each other. When the paper was completely covered with ink, I let it dry before coming back in with white and gold paint pens to add a bit more structure to the lines. Then I used two sizes of black Letter It Fineliners to outline the paint pen areas, and also to create the impression of more dimension within the various colors. Finally, I flicked the whole thing with clear water and let it sit for five minutes before blotting off the excess. Proof of how much more fun this is to DO rather than read (or write) about: I made the second panel before the first one was even fully dry!!! 

It's somewhat important to use a palette composed of colors that all blend well together. If you don't know which shades will fuse into cool new colors and which will make mud, I highly (HIGHLY) 

recommend purchasing (or bookmarking online) a color wheel! In the meantime, the junior high school acronym we learned to memorize the colors of the spectrum in order : ROY G BIV ...which stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet... is most helpful! Colors that are directly next to each other on the wheel (and in the acronym) are analogous and basically guaranteed to blend well; this includes looping around from Indigo and Violet to Red, btw. If this sounds like a boring limitation, remember that within each color, there are MANY different hues and they're all fair game!

It's a Many-Splendored Mandala Monday

It's been a bit grey and bleak here in New Jersey, but since it's such bad karma to complain about RAIN in DECEMBER, I'm just brightening things up on my own, thanks to Simon Hurley's gorgeous palette of create. Dye Inks from Ranger!