Autumn: A Watercolored Festival of Fallen Leaves

Brrrrrr!  A wet, cold front has moved into the East Coast, thanks to the whipping winds of Hurricane Joacquin that fortunately turned out to sea. But what had been temperatures in the 80s suddenly dropped into the 50's and maybe lower, with the wind making the air feel even colder.

 

Yup, Mr. Monkey had me move the kid toys out of from in front of the fireplace and he kicked it on for some quick warmth in the living room. I thought I could suffer through the chill at night, but I caved, and turned on the heat. And broke out jackets. And shoes!  I miss warm weather already!!

 

But Autumn is in fact here, and the trees have turned colors and are dropping their leaves. I saw piles of them blown onto the walk and became inspired:

 

 

 

And I'd like to issue a challenge to my readers:  Play Mother Nature and stamp and color up your own leaves, and let me see how you'll use them. Will they be on a card, a scrapbooking layout, a wreath, a home décor item?

 

I'm coming back here in a week or so to see if you will leave a comment with a link to your blog, where you will post your leaf-oriented project....

 

Here's what I used to make the leaves above:

 

I used Close To My Heart's brand new watercolor palette, shown at left.

The pigments in these paints are unusually superior with great coverage.  You can get them on my CTMH website (cardmonkey.ctmh.com) by referencing #Z3132, or using this LINK.

 

Next, I put a drop of water (FREE!) in the middle of a CTMH All-purpose mat on the smooth, non-adhesive side. Here's what the mat looks like in the catalog. It is #Z2045 and is handy for so many uses, that you really do NEED this mat.

I used CTMH's paint brush set (Z3188), which is a terrific set for a great price. Color the water on your mat by dabbing your paint palette with color, picking up some color and dropping some onto the mat and into the puddled water.  Swirl it, play with it! 

 

I stamped an assortment of these lovely stamps from CTMH (B1492 "Fallen Leaves"), using Ranger Archival (Waterproof Ink) onto Watercolor Paper.  Here is where I will be honest: I used to watercolor in my teens and I have a LOT of water color paper, and I could not tell you what brand I used. CTMH does carry some watercolor paper, that I have not yet tried. I want a paper that will hold and blend the water/paint, so this was just some that I had handy. I cut the leaves out ("fussy cut") with scissors and dunked them onto my craft mat with paint.  If I wanted to add more intense colors, I did so, using my paint brush.

 

I totally love that Close To My Heart is on trend with watercolor paints and using them with stamps on cards and memory keeping products. And what better time than to play with the miracles of color than Autumn?  

 

 





Painted Butterflies for Mom

Good morning, CardMonkey friends and followers.

First, let me apologize for my inactivity on my blog. It seems I have gotten wrapped up in the work of creating and the joys of sending -- along with babysitting and caring for family -- that I've neglected my dear friends here.  Forgive me?

Just after my last post (in May, egads), hubby and I traveled to Florida to visit my parents.

It is so wonderful to see them aging in place, as well as can be at 85 and 87. This spring, Dad completed a 9-week course of daily radiation to treat aggressive Prostate Cancer, which thankfully was fully encapsulated within the prostate and hadn't metastasized at all.  Mom has neck/back disc compression issues that have left her feeling a bit dizzy and imbalanced, so she has been taking physical therapy. Neither Mom nor Dad had been in their gorgeous pool in 2015, "life got in the way."  I'm glad to say our visit was good, and John and I got my parents in the pool every day of our extended weekend.

Mom's birthday was not long after our visit, and I knew that I wanted to break out some new techniques to make her a card she'd love. (Who am I fooling? She loves anything we kids make for her, always has!)

Here is Mom's card:

 

To make this card, I used the pretty stamp set from Altenew called Painted Butterfly. This is a multi-layer stamp set where you can use any/all layers to create lovely artistic butterflies.  Look here:

 

First I stamped the outlines of the butterfly (highlighted here with light blue circles), stamping them in Versamark watermarking glue/ink and sprinkling them with Ranger fine black embossing powder, available from Close To My Heart. I stamped the images onto watercolor paper from Canson.  I then heat-set the powder with a craft heater. This stabilizes the impression and makes it able to accept water or alcohol inks without smearing. 

 

I then took the first layer stamp (highlighted here in pink), laid it on my acrylic block and literally painted the stamp with watercolor paints onto the stamp, and stamped the paint atop of the embossed outlines.  Where needed, I filled in the color by pushing the paint with a water pen. When the image was dry, I cut the image into a card-sized rectangle, using a Lil' Inker Dual Stitched Rectangle die.

 

I created the inside of the card using the same method, and stamped both the front and inside of the card with a birthday sentiment from the "Card Chatter - Birthday" collection from Close To My Heart.  I added a few sparkle gems from CTMH, mounted the images on a vertical A2 card I created from Gypsy-colored cardstock from CTMH, and voila, happy birthday, Mom!

 

 



Hot New Technique: Bokeh Background

One of the hottest new techniques for cardmaking is called "Bokeh".  A Bokeh background adds interest to what might otherwise be a plain cardstock behind a stamped image.

Here is one card I made using this technique:

If you'd like to try this technique yourself, I've developed this tutorial in photo images:

Here are some supplies you'll need: watercolor paper, painter's tape, acetate circle stencils that you cut yourself, any kind of watercolor paints, and any kind of paint brushes.

Pigment ink dries fairly quickly. Again, if you'd like to rush it along, blow some warm air over the ink using a craft heater.  Once the white Bokeh circles are dry, stamp your images on top of the circles. Mat your watercolor paper on top of layer(s) of cardstock and embellish the art as you choose. 

Here, I used a retired Close To My Heart stamp set called "Quick Cards - Bumble Bee" (A1135), along with adhesive gems from CTMH and ribbon from May Arts.