Double Layer Butterfly Card

This was going to be a triple layered card but I would have lost the design so it only made it to two layers!
When I got this DSP pack I was determined that I was going to use it. Hope you are not getting sick of seeing it. Honestly, how could you! The paper is so versatile, so much to do with it!

Inside Banner Pop-Up Card

This card was inspired by a card I saw on Pinterest by Lynn Dunn. She called it a 3D Pop Up Butterfly Card, but I have seen similiar cards referred to as Inside Banner Pop-Up so that is what I am going with.  I did make some changes. I changed the front layout, different Botanical Butterfly DSP and I used Enjoy Life stamp set images and sentiments. So I think it has enough 'me' in it. I love it!
Hope you like it!

3. Colouring Wonderful Romance

This is the last in my series of colouring the bouquet from the Wonderful Romance stamp set. My colouring this time used Stampin' Blends (Alcohol Markers) onto Shimmery White cardstock with Memento Black ink.  I find colouring with blends and watercolour pencils to be similiar but each has there own pecularities.
The blends have a light and dark pen. So the darker colour is coloured where you want it darker, like in shadows. The lighter colour is coloured where you want highlights, for example the tips of the leaves. I know that's simplified but hey that easiest and shortest way of explaning it.







Again I find when blending the colours or shades together I colour in circles.
You can blend different colours together. For instance the yellow flowers were coloured with Daffodil Yellow and Mango Melody. I added a line of Mango Melody to the tops of the petals, coloured up and down to blend with yellow.
It's best to sit down and make a swatch of the colours and samples of the colours that blend well together for future reference.







I like to use Shimmery White cardstock with my blends.  Stamp your images with Memento black and make sure that the ink has fully dried before colouring. Always have some scrap paper below to soak up some of the excess ink when blending. I prefer it to soak into the scrap rather than bleed on the surface.

Hope you liked this colouring series and that you join the colouring craze too. I find it relaxing and stimulating at the same time.
I am self taught and my skills have grown with practise.
My best advise when it comes to colouring is to have a go, and practise. I tried to keep it simple so that you have a go. It is a beginning which can be built on. Don't expect a masterpiece first off, practise, watch some  Youtube tutorials or come to one of my classes.

The Romance Continues.

Happy St Valentines to everyone!
Today's cards are for this special day.  I have used the Wonderful Romance Bundle with the Floral Romance Speciality DSP. No colouring with these cards, just some simple stamping. 

This card uses two vellum sheets from the Speciality DSP. One for the background, while I fussy cut some flowers and leaves from the other.

This is my favourite, I love the white, grey and pink palette. I layered up some leaves and finished it with a white Bakers Twine bow. This was adhered to the decorative label and raised up with some dimensionals. Below it is a white ribbon banner.

2. Colouring Wonderful Romance

I water coloured with inks onto water colour paper with an Aqua Painter in my last post. Today I am using the same stamped which has been stamped with Versa Mark ink and silver embossed onto Shimmery White cardstock, water colour pencils with a Blender Pen.
Shimmery White cardstock is a good choice to use with an Aqua Painter or with a Bender Pen.
If I was colouring in a large page of a colouring book I would on most occasions reach for my Aqua Painter. For a small stamped image I would prefer to use my Blender Pen. I used my Blender Pen on these two cards.
Again I am self taught with colouring with Water Colour Pencils.  So this is my interpretation on how to use them.

When I got my pencils I made a colour swatch, and I played around with finding colours that blended well together and kept this with my pencils. This can be added to as you go along. I won't bore you with a long explanation of how I coloured this image but take the flower in the bouquet for an example,  the bottom of the Petals were coloured with Daffodil Yellow while the top portion of the petal was coloured with Real Red.  Then using the Blender Pen I started to colour up in circles up to the Real Red, mixing or blending it together and then coming down in circles. Hope you can follow that explanation.

The leaves I coloured in the same fashion but I wanted to add some light/dark and shadow into them. I used Old Olive at the base of each leaf and under or around leaves that were on top and Yellow Daffodil to the tips of each leaf. Not all of the leaf had colour layed down, in other words some areas of the leaf were not coloured. Again I used my Blender Pen and colouring in circles, moving the colour to white areas and up to the yellow tips, then working down again.

1. Colouring Wonderful Romance - Colouring with Inks.

I have said many times that I love to colour. The floral bouquet stamp from Wonderful Romance stamp set is perfect for this. So over my next few posts I am going to share the colouring of this image using inks and water colour pencils  with an aqua painter or blender pen,  and blenders (alcohol markers).
I must say that I am most comfortable colouring with my water colour pencils. I am improving with my blenders. I have used these less than water colour pencils and I am still working out the intricacies of these markers. Really my biggest problem is with 'bleeding' past the lines. I tend to over saturate the paper with ink when blending the ink shades.  I just need to practise more. Lastly, I am out of my comfort zone when water colouring with inks. I think mainly as  I am impatient and like to have more control over the medium used. I am also self taught so I do make lots of errors.
So I will be brave and share my cards that I did with inks. Firstly, I did stamp out a few images onto watercolour paper with Versa Mark ink and embossed, one with silver, one with gold and one with copper. I taped each down to a board with blue painters tape to avoid warping. Embossing helps make water colouring easier as the water stays inside the lines and stops unwanted mixing of colours. This is particularly good for impatient people. I spritz the paper first before adding any colour.  I prefer to use my markers to scribble ink onto a stamp block.  Have some hand paper towel on hand to clean off the aqua painter or for moping  up excess water from the brush. Also, very handy to mop up errors. One tip with choosing colours is be aware that mixing water with ink dilutes the strength of the colour, so either pick a stronge colour or be prepared to dry off between repeated application of ink. The same applies with adding a different colour. My best advice is to have a go! It won't be perfect but treat each time as a learning session.


Water colouring is 'magic' - but that usually appears a day or two later, well for me anyway!  I am never really happy with what I do straight after colouring but I find if I leave it to dry naturally, it always looks better to me a day or two later. Sometimes I leave it as it is, and sometimes I play around with it.
Well here's my three cards completed using inks and an aqua painter.

This is my favourite from the three cards.  And yes!, 'happy' was stacked. That's the other fad I am going through. Cutting out multiple dies, glueing and stacking for dimension. The die came from Well Written Framelits Dies. The paper comes from Gingham Gala 6x6" DSP and the ribbon is a freebie from SAB.












Here's a closer look at the other two cards.

Seven Cards. from one sheet of the Botanical Butterfly DSP

During one hot day recently, when it is only good to sit in a cooled room I decided to do some colouring.  I pulled out one sheet from the Botanical Butterfly DSP which is made to add colour and cut it into 6 pieces measuring 4x6".  Doing so makes each piece more manageable and easier to use.  You have lots of small projects rather than one large piece which can be a bit daunting.  Saying that, I still had some hits and misses with my mini projects.  I had six pieces or 6 projects and I ended up with 7 cards. How can that be? The photo below might be a bit of a give away.
I ended up using both my Blends and Water Colouring Pencils but not on the same piece.
Here they are  from left to right-

1. Birthday Wishes Card.
I used my Blends on this piece. It turned out lovely, but I had a little trouble working out how to include a sentiment.
Finally, settled on a band of Vellum paper with a very narrow strip of silver glitter paper. The vellum mutes the background.  'Birthday' came from the Well Written Framelits. 'Wishes' was embossed onto the vellum with White embossing powder. It came from an old  stamp set Build a Birthday.

2. Blue and Purple Spotlight Butterflies Happy Birthday
I coloured the butterflies only, with my watercolour pencils.
The check panel is also from the same dsp pack and the Highland Heather Organdy Ribbon is another freebie from Sale-A-Bration. The ribbon was one of 5 in the Combo Pack. 

3. You Make Me Smile Card
This card was not coloured in the first photo.  I was going to make some black and white cards but decided against it. This card was coloured in a similiar fashion to the previous card, except I used  different colours with the green butterfly.
The sentiment stamp and thinlit come from the Well Said Bundle. 













4 &5. Two For One Card
I started colouring this piece with blenders and decided I didn't like how it was going, so I sliced it on the diagonal, changed the colour combination and finished the card on the left using the spotlight technique - colouring the butterflies only.
I went back to the small section and tried a combination of colours that were 'pale' or mute. I wanted the butterflies to stand out but I didn't want the background to overpower or become too busy. I think it worked with light blenders  - Smoky Slate -background, Crub Cake - daisy centre's, Highland Heather - Lavendar.

6. Bermuda Bay Butterfly
This one butterfly is all that survived from this section of dsp. I didn't like the Mango Melody flower that I coloured in, so after colouring the butterfly in shades of Bermuda Bay and  Pool Party, I fussy cut them out.
I rummaged through a box of leftovers from other projects and found this brayered background.  I think the colour comination was  Bermuda Bay, Coastal Cobana and Soft Sea Foam.  Added the black and check dsp (also from the same pack as the butterfly paper) and put it with a layer of white, then adhered it to a black card base. For a bit of bling I added a piece of silver sequin ribbon.
The 'happy birthday' sentiment stamp came from Happy Birthday Gorgeous.

7. Black and White Card
This card was so quick to make. No colouring and the sentiment from Well Said Bundle was the only stamping.  A little silver doily was adhered behind the oval sentiment and adhered with glure dots to the Silver Glimmer Paper. Looking at it now I think I could have added Some Rhinestones.

Brayered Background with a Splatter Technique

Yes the die has been stacked! I did say in my previous post that I was into stacking dies but these two cards also use the splattered background technique.   The backgrounds were brayered using the same colour combination of Soft Sea Foam, Pool Party and Coastal Cobanna onto some Shimmery White cardstock.
The card on the right was splattered with water by holding a water filled brush which was tapped  to cause the splatter. The card on the left was splattered with a mixture of water with Gold Shimmer Paint.