Papertrey's July Blog Hop

The color palette for the blog hop over at Papertrey is divine. I don't know about other people's experience, but I find PTI's colors to be more WOW! in person, than on my computer screen. This challenge left me thinking there was nothing that couldn't be accomplished if I just used wonderful 'Summer Sunrise' ink.                                                                        I just went for two tags. Tags are small experiments I can handle. For both tags I mixed and matched sets. The pinks and yellows reminded me of a 'gold flame' honeysuckle in my backyard. 'Mat Stack 5 provided the die-cut and most of the stamps. I used one half of a ornament stamp from the set to make the leaves, and for the stem, the dashed stitches from button boutique. 'Happy Birthday to you!' is from Flower Fusion #9 done with StazOn 'Timber Brown' because black was too severe for the palette I thought.

The second tag I'm not so happy with, but I just can't put my finger on why. I tried after the fact watermarking with VersaMark 'Dazzle Champagne' to give a bit more interest...toooo subtle. There was a discovery though; watermark ink on dye ink will slightly deepen to hue, just as it does on colored paper. All except the Happy Birthday stamp (from 'Happy Day'), the images are from 'Iconic Images', one of my go to sets. The die is 'Mat Stack 3'. A little DecoArt 'Glamour Dust' and glue pen were used to finish off the pair.

New Home Card

Houses have always been a love affair for me. When I was just four or five years old, I would beg my parents to drive through certain neighborhoods in Cincinnati, where the houses had that 'storybook quality'. Many were half timbered and/or stuccoed. (There are not as many of these abodes outside of Boston where I live now, and I miss them.)

The very first house stamp set I bought was 'Home Sweet Home' by Crafty Secrets. I love the images  and use them for holiday and new-home cards. This set is one of my favorites and I never tire of the different ways it may be rendered.

One technique that works particularly well with Clear Art Stamps's  designs is outlining. The image is stamped in a faded black, grey or brown (dye ink only), and then the lines are drawn over in a bolder hue of the  colors I wish to make each area. I use my set of fine-point 'Sharpie' markers on the outlines, and fill in the centers with a lighter version of the same color, but in colored pencil.

 DISCLAIMER

 At the time I made this card, I could not get a good light image from the inks I had. Usually this works by stamping off lightly once, and then repeating the stamp on the paper you'll be coloring on. I still wanted to use this technique, so I scanned my stamped image and then printed it out on draft. (You can see some pixelation (not the storybook kind) in this image.)

For the card I used a Brenda Walton card from 'Postmarks' and recut the hole with my Labels Two Nestabilities set. I Cut the border to the window with the same size die and then again with the next size larger, and finished by running it through my Cuttlebug embossing folder.

Please leave me a comment and tell me if you like (or don't like) this technique.

Supplies: Crafty Secrets 'Clear Art Stamps' set 'Home Sweet Home', K and Co card by Brenda Walton, Papertrey Picket Fence Die, Cornish Farm (defunct) running rabbit stamp, Cuttlebug 'Birds and Swirls' embossing folder, white Prismacolor pencil, gold 'Liquid Pearls', and misc paper flowers and brad.