more ombre, hombre!

we're still making holiday cards based on this gorgeous "rainbow ombre" inspiration photo at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ so there's plenty of time for you to join in, and we hope you will!

here's what i made this week:

i added water to color burst pigment powders by ken oliver crafts and then used them to paint loads of circles on some strathmore watercolor paper, then outlined the circles with colorful sharpies and frixion pens; tattered snowflake die: tim holtz/sizzix; bling swirls and MEGA-bling brad: recollections; cardstock: coredinations; ink for edges: colorbox; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

(if this background looks familiar it's because i test drove a similar idea in my sketchbook for one of the prompts in "30 days of watercolor"; this is why i never mind "wasting" time playing in a sketchbook or art journal and doing ICAD every year. the things we make that are NON-outcome-driven are quite different from what we make for assignments and whereas they don't usually translate quite so directly as this to a finished product, every once in a while they do, and it's very cool! but no matter what happens, "art play" is a great investment in future inspiration!)
♥♥♥

yep, i got out the color burst pigment powders again, this time i've used them to watercolor a background inspired by the luscious rainbow ombre tree in the photo. since it's quite a busy painting, i didn't add much in the way of embellishment, just a layered diecut snowflake. and plenty of bling. because bling is ALWAYS a good addition, lol!

there was some discussion here about which direction the card should face. jeff and i both liked it going horizontally, as in the photo above. my sister, though, felt very strongly that it should be placed vertically, as in the photo below. (and she was enthusiastic enough that this card miiiiiight just turn out to be hers at xmas time, so i've hedged my bets with the pics, lol!) :)

i'm linking up with the paper players' "xmas in july" challenge:

stephanie has also made a gorgeous card to inspire you, why not check that out at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ right now?!

double rainbow! (...of cards...)

i got to make some art with my niece and nephew over the weekend (a few of their adult minions came over, too) and when we got to talking about our favorite colors my niece immediately said, as she has for several years, that her favorite color is "rainbow". now, some people might argue that rainbow is technically not a color as such, but not me. i ♥LOVE♥ rainbows, especially watercolor ones. especially especially for card backgrounds! so just to be really clear about that i've used TWO of them on this card!

i'm entering this into the "hey brad" call at retro rubber challenge blog, whose mission is to inspire us to use stamps we've owned for AT LEAST a year.

part of one's entry is to mention what stamp we've used and how old it actually is. i've used the "oh so lovely" stamp and frame from an amy tangerine stamp set called "draft". i'm not sure when i got it, but i'm fairly certain it was before we moved into this house, which was april of 2013. (a bit of googling reveals most of the promotional blog posts talking about this set were in late 2012, so that seems right; it's definitely OLD!) i've teamed the stamps up with some eyelet outlet butterfly brads, mini butterfly brads and striped washi tape.

while i was uploading this card, i found another rainbow card that uses the same tape, a bunch of colorful eyelet outlet enamel dots and an EO flatback resin heart i absolutely adore. somehow, i apparently never blogged this guy, so here it is now:

be sure to check out the eyelet outlet blog, where the amazing dt shows off a new project nearly every single day! (and they are all sooooooooo awesome!) ♥♥♥

say what??!

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is all talk... by which we mean... we want to see a speech bubble on your card, or more than one, if you prefer. possibly even-- if you're *ME*-- an entire card covered in speech bubbles:

scribbly birds stamp set by dina wakley/ranger ink; sentiment: unity stamps; tiny hearts: all night media;
patterned paper: amy tangerine/american crafts + vintage sheet music; dark brown cardstock: bazzill;
ink: ranger archival; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 

i had a few different ideas for using dina wakley's scribbly birds, but my choice was clear once i found the amy tangerine paper with all the speech bubbles to use as a background. after that i did a bit of stamping, a bit of paper piecing and some pretty subdued matting and called it a day.

need additional speech bubble inspiration? the SOS design team is here for you, darlings, or rather there for you... at shopping our stash, that is! ♥

HOW can june be OVER already??!?!

yikes, that was a FAST month. but then, time flies when you're making tiny pieces of art on index cards every day!*

card 27: neon sign

if you've known me for more than five minutes, you know i'm obsessed with typography and also with most vintage things. hence my mini-obsession with old signage. which, btw, is fun to draw...

card 26: off prompt

a night that i sat down at 10:30 with NO IDEAS; usually what i do at that point is grab my book of stencils and a box of inks and just see what happens...

(and yes, for the record, i totally swapped the order of cards 26 and 27 entirely so my favorite could be at the top. don't judge me, kthx?)

card 28: dogs or cats

as you know, i don't really draw representationally, and i have no pets. but having stumbled upon the fun and whimsical art of julia marshall on pinterest, i had to have a little play with my colored pencils and the results are... well, vaguely recognizable, lol, so i'm callin' it a WIN!!!

card 29: swimming pool

i started out with a sensible and potentially quite lovely idea of a pool of water in many blendy shades of ink, and wound up with... SEA MONSTER!!!!!!!! i don't even question these things anymore. i just roll with it...

card 30: trivial pursuit

coincidentally this prompt arrived right after i had found a packet of geometrically shaped vellum stickers at target, which included little triangles almost exactly the same size and shape as the pieces from trivial pursuit. it seemed like a sign. so i heeded it.

(the stickers are part of target's "handmade modern" line of art supplies, they come in one packet which has five colors, they cost about $3, you can buy them HERE; i mention all this b/c i've been asked this a few times since i posted these cards on instagram, lol)

card 31: 100

i wondered what would happen if i layered the vellum stickers in a mandala-inspired design, and how many i'd need to fill the entire 3x5" card. the answers were, "it'll look kinda cool" and, "110" respectively. so know we know.

card 32: off prompt

yep, it's officially a continuing series of geometric vellum sticker patterns now. will i EVER post anything else?? well yeah, sure; but i can't guarantee it will be before i run out of the stickers... sorry...

*technically, i believe the expression is "time flies when you're having fun" but to me it's the same thing, really... :) :) :)

Under the Strawberry Moon

It's my day on the Eyelet Outlet blog, where I'm musing on the many and varied sources of inspiration. In this case, the expression "Strawberry Moon" (referring to a full moon in the month of June; traditionally thought to be the best time for picking strawberries) How is it possible to be a 50+ year old "word person" and never heard that?? Well, somehow I hadn't, until last week, but as soon as I did, all I could think of was strawberry-themed papercrafting projects. Luckily I had nearly a whole package of luscious Eyelet Outlet Strawberry Brads to help me out!

I made a card first, o'course. You may suspect I built the entire thing around the punny sentiment, but I can neither confirm nor deny such speculation. (Ok, YES!!! You know me too well!)

I scattered Strawberry Brads and strawberry flowers --made from the smallest White Paper Flower Layers with Yellow Oval Bling centers-- in a cascade down the front of the card, surrounding the sentiment, for which I combined die-cut letters and a few tiny alphabet stickers. 

Next I decorated a little cardstock box with more White Paper Flower Layers held on with a Strawberry Brad. Gift-wrapping is probably my favorite "alternate" use for crafting supplies; because really, we all secretly want to receive a very fancy package now and then, don't we?

Were you inspired by the Strawberry Moon, as well? If so, I'd love to see what you made, leave me a link in the comments! ♥

ombre christmas forever!

is it possible we're halfway through the year and haven't had an inspiration challenge yet at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥? well, yeah, apparently it is. but let's fix that right now:

ok, so, you know how these things work, right? you can take *ANY* aspect of the photo that you like from the sparkly tree, the ombre colors, the bauble shapes, the dark wood grain, the rattan of the shades, the... well, you get the idea. take as much or as little detail as you'd like from the photo, but let it inspire you! and heck, if it's not blindingly obvious which bits you've used, it couldn't hurt to mention that in your post, eh? ;) sometimes i'm pretty literal, so here's what i've made:

color burst pigment powders by ken oliver crafts painted onto scraps of strathmore watercolor paper then layered with liquitex flexible modeling paste. stencils: the crafter's workshop, heidi swapp, tim holtz, studio calico; patterned papers: blue fern studio, american crafts; gold cardstock: the paper co; white kromekote: the paper cut; emboidery floss: dmc; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i confess the ombre baubles realllllllly delighted me. like to an, "i'd love to do an ombre tree like this someday" kind of level. but you know, it's july, so that's not very practical at the moment is it? so in the meantime, i've settled on just making my own rainbow ornaments and arranging them in a sort of cascade. i traced a few sizes of circle template onto scraps of watercolor paper painted with different shades of color burst.* they looked pretty good together but somehow they just weren't quiiiiite right. and then i thought, "TEXTURE!" so i stenciled a bit of white modeling paste onto each bauble et voila... suddenly they were a set! i mounted them onto a bit of lacy patterned paper, made some hanger-top-thingies out of scraps of gold paper, attached gold embroidery floss and matted the whole thing on a luscious dark wood grain paper. and at the risk of being an immodest so-and-so... i really like this one!

speaking of things to like, stephanie has made an incredibly lovely-- and incredibly *SPARKLY* card that i know will inspire the heck out of you, so head on over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and check it out!

*one of the unexpected results of using liquid watercolor is that i seldom use ALL of every color i've mixed in whatever project i'm working on at the time. and let's face it, i'm a "saver"... so since i save the offcuts of the watercolor paper, i might as well paint them with the leftover color bursts, right? sometimes i paint little patches or stripes or practice brush lettering; sometimes i combine the extra colors and paint a solid patch of the new shade; sometimes i will layer tonight's colors OVER last night's or last week's. it depends on what kind of mood i'm in. sometimes the "use it up" page actually starts to turn into something interesting, and i make it into a finished piece, like these circles or these stripes. sometimes i just keep the little painted pieces to use for backgrounds or diecuts. if nothing else, this method lets me try absolutely anything i feel like doing, without worrying that i'm "wasting paint"... which is definitely a good thing! ♥

i'll use any color you want, as long as it's green

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is called "how does your garden grow" and we'd like to see, well, gardeny things, lol! that could be flowers, trees, veggies, gardening tools... if it's in your garden, it's fair game. my first idea was to do a flower painting, but i do A LOT of those, so i thought this time i'd try something different, like all foliage, maybe? and it came out pretty well, i think. so here's my card:

colorburst pigment powders by ken oliver crafts painted on strathmore watercolor paper, outlined with a faber-castell pitt artist pen with an XS/.1mm nib; text paper flowers cut with a TH/sizzix "tattered florals" die; brad: american crafts; burlap paper from a mixed media texture pad by dcwv; white glossy kromekote cardstock by the paper cut. ink: colorbox; adhesives: elmers brand tape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

one of my favorite ways to watercolor is using color burst pigment powders, mixed with water. they become, essentially, liquid watercolors. they blend beautifully and dry with such clarity; plus the absence of binders means it's easy to outline on top without killing your pen nibs. a few people have asked me how i go about this, logistically, so i thought i'd photograph my setup to give you an idea. this palette (from walmart, i think, or target, about a year ago) has nice deep wells which is nice, because unlike the type of watercolor that comes in tubes, the liquid will slosh over if it's not contained. and colorburst mixes IMMEDIATELY!!! so if your colors touch even slightly, they are a gorgeous new color right then! in this case i knew i wanted to use a lot of different shades of green so i had chartreuse, lime, terre vert and pthalo all ready to go. but to get even more variety in monochrome, it's good to venture into the colors on either side of yours on the color wheel. so also i have lemon yellow, yellow ochre, turquoise and ultramarine.

i always layout my colors in spectrum order and shades from light to dark. (remember that i'm completely self-taught --and also slightly weird-- so if you've been to art school and are chuckling at my method, just know that this works for me!) i put a few grains of each color i want to use into separate wells and then add a few drops of clear water-- and yes, i use an eye dropper for this rather than a mister, b/c the powder is verrrrrrry lightweight and can be blown around by the action of the mister. i leave an empty well between the colors if possible, so that i can use them to mix median shades. i will often put intermediate colors into the top sections of the palette so that they can easily be added to other colors. i usually stand my water cup (which yes, has big bird on it, lol) on the other side of the palette to catch my drips. i work on top of an old quilting mat of my aunt's (it has a grid on the other side) because it's indestructible and can be rinsed off in the sink. 

i've been trying to let the brush and the paint do more of the work for me, so whenever possible i jump in without a sketch. since i paint flowers and leaves fairly often, this was one of those times. i do often outline with a thinner brush to kind of map out the shapes i want, as you see above. sometimes i will even use a tombow (waterbased) marker for this, b/c it gives me more line control, and the color will blend in when i add water and paint. i do some wet mixing to get a nice "watercolory" look... but if you want separate colors, you really need to work in layers. start with the lightest shades, not too wet, and put successive colors on top of each other, after the lower layers have dried, or at least almost dried. when i'm done, or think i'm done, with color, i let the whole entire thing dry completely before deciding if i want to outline it with either pen or stitching. again, if you've been to art school, you're probably thinking, "hey lauren, REAL watercolorists NEVER do this!" uh-huh, you're right. but i do. so there ya go! :)

to complete the card i added a soft turquoise burlap mat, a little bit of machine stitching (that's also holding my stiff watercolor paper to the textured burlap) and a text paper flower; all on top of a glossy white card base. et voila!

there's LOTS more inspiration waiting for you at SOS... off you go, darlings! ♥