Going for Gold.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I'm going for gold!

Using My Favourite Things Chevron Grid Background as my main element, and smothering it in all things gold!

I started by stamping out the, brand new and beautiful, Chevron Grid Background from My Favourite Things onto some watercolour card and covered in gold embossing powder.  I didn't want it to cover my entire card panel so, using a soft cloth, gently brushed away the gold embossing powder from the edges, leaving an interesting shape, and heat set.  I then took the (truly beautiful) Gansai Tambi Starry Watercolours and, using one of the lighter more transparent colours, painted in every other chevron.  I then took the light grey colour from the Zig Clean Colour Brush Pens, added a teeny amount of ink to every other chevron, and painted out with water.  Once that was all dry, I went back to my Starry Colours and added a few flicks and splatters of gold across my background.

I then heat embossed another piece of card in the same gold powder, and cut my 'Celebrate' by Sugar Pea Designs sentiment from it, along with the hearts & arrow from Paper Smooches Tiny Hearts die (hands down the most value for money die I have ever purchased).  Once cut, I then added another layer of gold embossing powder to my pieces to give them a nice finish.

I wanted some form of vellum to go behind my sentiment to anchor everything in place without taking away from the beautiful Chevron design and shimmery paint, so opted to cut My Favourite Things Fringe Dienamic to add to my background (it didn't show up too great in the photos, but worked just as I wanted it too in 'real life'!).

I added a twirl of gold twine to the back of my card, and built all my elements upon it.

I added a scattering of clear sequins from Neat and Tangled to help tie my design together and, after mounting onto an Avery Elle  Silver Fox Notecard, left it at that.

I really hope you like it, as always, everything I used is linked below.

See you next week.

 

Smile and shimmer with textured Starry Watercolour.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I'm shimmering up some texture paste...

...using the ever giving, Gansai Tambi Starry Colours Watercolour set.

This beautiful watercolour set's talents seem to know no bounds, so I was excited to see how they would react with some transparent texture paste, whether the gorgeous shimmer would shine through, and boy oh boy was I thrilled with the results.

Those bad boys shone through like the twinkling magic stardust they are!

I started with a quick watercolour wash (I know, shock horror!), across my background and set to dry.  I then got my Starry Watercolours pan set nice and wet, and added a good amount of product to my craft mat.  I then added a nice dollop of some clear texture paste to it, and mixed it up well.  I used the Hearts Stencil from Echo Park, and smooshed my starry shimmery texture paste over the top using a palette knife making sure not to cover the whole thing, I wanted to cover a corner and kind of fade off leaving some nice white space.

I then cut my 'Smile' sentiment from Lawn Fawn and gave it a couple of coats of gold embossing powder for even more dimension.  I finished my sentiment with this 'it's your birthday' from Lawn Fawn's Year Six, an awesome little cute set worth the money for this sentiment alone - so handy in finishing messages off!  I stamped it onto vellum and, after adding a twirl of metallic thread underneath and the addition of a grey piece of card to ground everything, adhered onto my card front.

I matted onto some patterned paper from my stash, and mounted onto a grey card base, keeping everything up in the corner to help balance my elements out.

I added a wee little black enamel heart to tie everything together and there you have it.

It's hard to show in pictures just how shimmery the Gansai Tambi Starry Watercolours are, but when they catch the light, they really are just utterly stunning, and being able to use them along side so much of your crafty stash just makes them even more worthy of a space in your craft room!

As always, everything I have used is linked below so be sure to go check it out.

See you next week.

Jillx

     

   

     

Create your own inspiration.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I'm creating my own Pinterest style inspiration poster!

Using Mama Elephant's Block Party Letters, and the oh so beautiful Gansai Tambi Starry Colours.

You know the sort of thing I mean, they're very 'in' right now, always pretty with some cool fonts or graphics inspiring us to live the best life we can...or dare to dream to in any case.  Well...why not create your own?

I started by stamping out my chosen 'inspirational' quote using Mama Elephant's Block Party Letters and filling/masking them off with drawing gum (I've said it before and I'll say it again - this stuff is a must-have in your stash and if you haven't already tried it - you neeeed to!).  

I love alphabet sets as you can say anything and everything you want to.  It also means you can write sentiments in your own dialect, which for a northerner like me, is amazing (have you ever tried to find a card with 'mam' on it from your mainstream high street store? ...impossible!).  I especially love how these letters are open so your choices on how to colour them are limited only to what you have in your stash, and your own imagination!  I coloured mine using the Gansai Tambi Starry watercolour set as it fit perfect with the image I had in my head of a 'Pinterest' style poster.  Nothing to do with the fact I am in love/obsessed with them and can't put them down :) .

Once my drawing gum was dry, I created a watercolour wash over the background (well, it wouldn't be me if I didn't include a wash somewhere eh?!) and left to dry.  I then gently removed my gum and painted in my letters, like I say, using the absolutely beautiful Gansai Tambi Starry Colours.  The fact you get so many different shades of gold means you can create light and shadows to help with dimension.  I added a good few flicks and splashes of gold across the back and embellished with a scattering of sequins.  I matted my panel onto a piece of card I had gold embossed the edges of, mounted onto an Avery Elle notecard, and there you have it.

Now I did make another card, in exactly the same way (with a little addition of Sketchy Letters & Glossy Accents), for my friend's 40th birthday to emphasise how cool it can be to create your own sentiment saying exactly what you want to say...but forgot to photograph it before sending it!  Doh!  So got my friend to photograph it and send them over haha - and here they are...oh...and Happy 40th Stu :)

I hope you like them, and that they maybe inspire you to get inspirational!

As always, everything I used is linked below.

See you next week.

Jillx

    

Going For Gold

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I am going ga-ga for gold!

Using the incredibly beautiful new Gansai Tambi Starry Colours Watercolour pan set.

And oh my goodness are they beautiful?  They are so shimmery and easy to use!

So me being me, the first thing I wanted to with them was, of course, a background wash.  I wanted to see how they would react with my Distress Inks and to see if the pretty shimmer would remain when mixed with another medium, and boy oh boy, it definitely did.

I started with a piece of watercolour card and stamped out this huge 'Happy Birthday' sentiment from Mama Elephant's Birthday Wishes set, in black Versafine, and clear heat embossed.  I then stamped out this cute little bunny from Mama Elephant's Lunar Animals, and the little balloon from Mama Elephant's Woodland Gifts, and again, clear heat embossed.  I then masked  off my little bunny with 'drawing gum', (if you haven't already got some - get some - it makes masking soooo much easier, especially with watercolour).  Then for the fun part...  So the Gansia Tambi Starry Colours set includes 6 different pans of different golds, all absolutely beautiful, and in varying degrees of intensity.  I had already tested out my colours on a piece of scrap card, and chose which golds I wanted to use.  I went for the more intense colours as I knew I wanted to us it along some Distress Inks, and wanted the gold to stand out.  I used them in exactly the same way I would any other watercolour, and just went in to create a wash over my sentiment, sploshing and swooshing the colours around wherever I saw fit.  I then introduced my Distress Ink, a variety of pinks as I thought the gold and pink would look so pretty, and again, swooshed them over by background, then set aside to dry.

I was not let down with the shimmer once dried, it is gorgeous, although blumming hard to photograph!  I removed the drawing gum from my bunny and balloon, and coloured them both using my Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens, another incredible product new to the store!

I matted my panel onto a piece of paper from My Favourite Things Off The Grid paper pad, (which I LOVE and am going to re-purchase so I NEVER run of of haha), mounted onto a dark grey card base, added a coat of Glossy accents to the balloon, a scattering of sequins to embellish, and there you have it.

I really hope you like it.  

As always, everything I have used is linked below, so be sure to take a look.

See you next week.

Jillx