Gelato Experiment

I had such fun working with my first set of gelatos as a watercolor medium.  I heat embossed the image with white first. The shading was so effective.  A very simple card but lovely, I think.  I sent it to a friend who needed some cheer.

Faber Castell Gelatos with water

Image: PTI Year Of Flowers - Rose

Card stock: PTI Harvest Gold & White

Note cards - a perfect gift

                                              

I made a set of notecards featuring the New York skyline for my New York daughter.  Sales guru Tom Hopkins always taught the value of a hand written Thank You note - and I suspect that in these days of digital communication, such a note received makes the sender even more memorable than in my days of sales & marketing.    I also made a sweet little box for the notes.  Great little gift!

Make It Monday - Pie Charts

This week's Make It Monday was to use bits of paper to make a "pie chart" for a card.  I used the Doodlie-Do dies to create some leaves and flowers.

Dies:  PTI Doodlie-do

Cardstock:   PTI New Leaf

Big and Bold

I'm lying in wait for a package from Amazon that will have my first set of gelatos and a set of H20 sparkle-y watercolors.  Again, so that I'll have lots of options for the watercolor class that's coming up in May.  Meanwhile, here's a card I did the other night with a new set of stamps that came in the April PTI box.  Love, love, love the cheerful colors!  And love it when I can use copics to color an image.  The image is so bold that you really don't want too much else competing for one's attention. I think I'll send it to one of my friends who could use some cheer.  One of his dogs just got diagnosed with Lymphoma and he's going through a tough time.

There IS a difference between sets of watercolors!

I'm getting ready to take the Watercolor class for card makers in May.  I'm really excited to take this because watercolors were the first art lessons I took as a child from a wonderful Polish professor's wife long ago.  The best lessons she gave me were the assignments to mix colors to match whatever she had placed on a sheet of watercolor paper.

I have several sets of watercolors and one of the assignments for the class was to make color swatches.  Wow!  I really got to see what makes the Windsor Newton and The Reeves pigments so different from an inexpensive craft set.  The more expensive behave like die inks and have more pure pigment in them.  The less expensive $5 a set kind have some fun colors but they do behave more like pigment inks.  --there's more Clay filler in them so they are more opaque and tend to sit on the surface.  Very interesting.  

Make It Monday

Make It Monday's challenge was to make a card with "splats" --watercolor style.  I like the contrast

 between the abstract splats and the linear design of the flower and sentiment. 

Paper:  PTI white cardstock

Stamps:  PTI Doodlie Do, Initial Thoughts

Ink:  PTI summer Sunrise, Orange Zest, Hibiscus Burst

Another HAPPY card!

There probably is a more scientific way to arrange and cut all these papers to make the sun's rays!  I just sorta slapped them together till they looked right and then pasted and wacked off the excess.  But it looks great and is such a happy, happy card.

Papers:  Doodlebug, Bo Bunny & PTI

Sentiment:  PowerPoppy "Renewal"

Zest for Life!

I love these Art Impressions ladies!  So fun to use all my Copic pens  to decorate them and then lots of jewels for thier earrings etc.  They are having such a good time together and such zest for Life!  They are comfortable in their own skins and having a great time.  Who cares if you're not a size 2?  Larger sizes really know how to enjoy life.

Old Fashioned Easter Cards

These cards were all inspired by a new Graphic 45 set of papers called "Sweet Sentiments".  The cards are very simple - mostly just fussy-cutting.  I used PTI cardstock and some embroidery thread from Michaels for accents.  Sweet and simple.

Another card with the lilies.  These are so much fun to make!

Card stock:  PTI harvest Gold

Background Paper:  Graphic 45 "Bohemian Bazaar"

Lily die: MFT

Just Lilies

These Lilies are made from a MFT die.  Jennifer McGuire gave me the idea of cutting them from cardstock and then custom-coloring them with Copic pens.  I love how the shading came out and the image was so perfect that any sentiment would have been clutter. Inside, this actually became a birthday card.

Weekly Inspiration Card

Time for another inspiration card for my daughter.  The  background paper is Graphic 45's "Bohemian Bazzar" - I adore all the bright colors.  The shark fin is for her self-appointed mascot, Mr. Shark, and the sentiment is from PTI "A little Inspiration".  Notepaper die: MFT.  I am imagining that she must be going through a lot of ups and downs as her fledgling business grows and thought this sentiment was perfect!