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.

 

Soft and simple, sweet little Pix in the spotlight.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I've gone soft and simple with a bit of design spotlighting...

...putting Mama Elephant's Pix's Favourite's in the spotlight!

Such a gorgeous set, it just seems to go hand in hand with a delicate design.

I started with a piece of watercolour card cut down to a panel using Lawn Fawn's Stitched rectangles.  I die-cut an off-centre circle, so that it edged off my card; to that circle, I cut Lawn Fawn's Forest Border and the cloud from Mama Elephant's Landscape Trio.  I then watercolour washed my background and my elements using Distress Inks.  I really wanted my background to be the softest of soft washes, so really watered down my inks and blotted the back as soon as I'd put the colour down to the point it's barely visible in the pictures, but looks really lovely and subtle in real life.

Once everything was dry, I added a sun die-cut from Lawn Fawn's Spring Showers and in-lad all my pieces back in place.  At this point I thought my spotlight circle was getting lost in the pale expanse of the background, and it wasn't really 'popping' like I wanted it to, so I added a border of grey patterned paper behind to help it stand out.

I then stamped out my main focal image, this delightful little bunny (Pix, I assume?), and little tree stump from Pix's Favourite's.  You get a load of different designs in this set, each one as adorable as the next, but with her little butterfly, I felt this one would work perfect with my design.  I coloured her using Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens, again, keeping it as light and gentle as I possibly could by adding a lot of water to my ink, and blotting often.  I then fussy-cut my image and mounted on top of my spotlight using foam tape.

I then stamped out my sentiment from the same Pix's Favourite set onto vellum in black ink, heat embossed, and adhered with just the teeniest bit of wet glue along the top, masked by the crosses from the stitched rectangle borders.

I added a few little bits of ribbon to embellish, cut into flags and banners and tucked into a little label, and finished off with a couple of black enamel hearts to tie the whole design together.

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

see you next week.

Jillx

Creating Faux Filters

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I'm creating my own faux photography filters...

Using Mama Elephant's Pix's Favourite's as my main focus.

I used to love creating this kind of sepia effect but hadn't tried it in ages so thought I'd give it another blast.

It's such a simple, yet effective technique.  You simply stamp your design out in a brown ink, and colour your images monochramaticially (is that a word?  You get what I mean...several tones of the same colour).  I used various brown Distress Inks and watercoloured my images, but you could use pens, or pencils, or whatever your favourite colouring medium is, to achieve the same look.  I also introduced an accent colour of pink to add a little warmth and help the heart to stand out.

I used My Favourite Things Geometric Grid to stamp onto my background and white heat embossed.  I then brushed more of the same colour inks across it creating a matching wash, and used Lawn Fawn's Say Cheese die to frame to my coloured image.

I enjoyed this technique so much and really loved the result, I felt it looked like I'd put a cool vintage filter over my images, so decided to try out the same thing again but in black and white this time;  and here's where that took me...

I used Mama Elephant's In My Heart and Spring Garden to create my black and white design, and used the exact same technique, just using black and grey inks, again, with a splash of pink.  I've also seen a load of simple blue & white designs, like the look you get on crockery and bone china, and that looks awesome too, so maybe I'll give that a go next.  I was thinking you could try it in any colour and I bet the result would be really interesting...like your own personal Instagram for your cards :)

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

See you next week.

Jillx

         

Negative die-cutting covered in cute critters!

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week I've got some negative die-cutting covered in a whole host of Lawn Fawn loveliness!

Using different sets from throughout the years;  one such set, Critters in the Burbs, goes waaaaay back, and has an emotional tie to me as it was my first EVER Lawn Fawn purchase...leading to an absolute love and addiction!

I started by cutting my 'hello' from a piece of card using Quinn's ABC's (lower case), then creating a little watercolour scene over the top using Zig Clean Colour Pens.  I then stamped out all the little critters I wanted to use and coloured them, again, using Zig Clean Colour Pens.  I flicked through all my Lawn Fawn sets to pick out some my all time favourite critters to use, so of course you could use anything.  I do love a good rummage through my collection.  It's easy to forget how awesome the older sets are, and deserve to be brought back to life!  My squirrel and rabbit are from the golden oldie, 'Critters in the Burbs', my little birdies are from 'Chit Chat', (nobody does cute birds as good as Lawn Fawn!), and my wriggly worm is from 'Bugs and Kisses'.

I wanted to make a real feature of my negative space, but didn't want to do my 'go-to' of making it into a shaker, so decided to make a really bright background to beam through and draw your eye in.  I used 'Gingham Backdrops' and a bright yellow ink spritzed with a little water.

I used Mama Elephant's 'Index Card Creative Cut' to cut my panel and a wee little frame from patterned paper, then adhered all my elements in place using foam adhesive for dimension.  The easiest way to make sure all the wee bits for your negative space go back in the correct place, is to pop the 'positive' piece back in, glue down the small 'negative' pieces, then pop the the positive back out...you with me :/

I loved the bright, clean, fun look to this card, so skipped any extra embellishments and left it there.

I really hope you like it, and that it maybe makes you want to rummage through some of your older sets and give em' a good inking!

As always, everything I used is linked below.

See you next week.

Jillx