Seize The Birthday - Clean And Simple With A Stencil

Hello!  It's time for a new challenge at Seize The Birthday, and our host Nancy has chosen Clean And Simple With A Stencil.

I've used Curvy Girl Can Buy Herself Flowers by Stamping Bella, watercoloured it with Distress inks and inked a Tim Holtz stencil to ground her.  The sentiment is by Gina K Designs.

If you don't want to play along with our theme, you can still play with our Anything Goes theme as long as it's birthday-related.

Pop on over to the Seize The Birthday blog for some more fabulous inspiration from our Surprise Party Guests, Johanna, Milla and Bonnie, and join us in the gallery.

Visible Image - Gratitude/Reflection

 

Our theme at Visible Image this week is Gratitude/Reflection and my brief is for Clean and Simple. I've been reflecting on the gorgeous summer we've had, and the multitude of butterflies that are still around, so I went with a butterfly-themed card using Butterfly Effect and Butterfly Ink stencil.

Although it's clean and simple, I wanted to add detail in the circles of the large stamp, so I needed to do some masking.  Firstly, I stamped the circles stamp onto my base card.

Using masking paper to cover that image I stamped again, then cut out the circles, keeping all pieces of the stamped image.  I left the large left-hand circle uncovered and stamped the grungy butterfly stamp.

The next step was to cover that circle and uncover the other two, but also keeping the outer areas covered.  I stamped the small butterfly and 'change' word.

Once they'd been stamped, I could remove all of the masking and do some selective colouring of the images using a limited palette.

Then all the circles had to be masked again so that I could stencil the large butterfly over the top.

I used Broken China for the stencilling, fading it towards the centre.

Here's a pic before the reveal,

and after.

 I added Stickles to highlight some areas on the tips of the butterfly wings and some of the small circles,

and added a sentiment to balance the design.

You can find plenty of inspiration an supplies on the Visible Image site here.

Seize The Birthday - Embossing

Hello!  Our new challenge at Seize The Birthday is Embossing, chosen by Jenny.  You can heat emboss, dry emboss or use embossing paste, it's up to you.

Or if you'd rather do your own birthday thing, you can play along with our Anything Goes theme.

I've used a new-to-me gift bag die from Waffle Flower, and dry-embossed the smooshed background.

Pop on over to the Seize The Birthday blog to see what the rest of the design team and our Surprise Party Guest Johanna have created, and join in the fun.

Visible Image - End of Summer

It's September and we're heading towards autumn, so this week's Design Team brief is, appropriately, End of Summer.

Every day on our dog walks the dragonflies are dancing past so I thought I'd showcase one of my makes for the July Release, Love of Nature, using the dragonflies from the Brighter Days stamp set.  

I stamped the dragonflies on acetate using Staz-On, and once they were dry I covered the reverse of the images with Crystal Stickles and left them overnight.

For the card background I stamped images using the Particle stamp set from the February release in Brilliance pigment ink.

I wanted to use the Framed Fibres die to represent ripples on the water, so first I had to create a background.  I used the teal and blue from the Large Metallic watercolour set to create my water.

Then I painted black card with the small iridescent paints, which are interference colours designed to work on dark card.

Here's a pic just after I'd run it through the Big Shot and before knocking the pieces out.

Once I'd adhered the diecut panel to the water panel and trimmed it, that went onto the background, which was in turn mounted onto seafoam card.

I added the sentiments from the Brighter Days set in Versafine Onyx Black.

Lots of lovely shimmer and shine whichever way you angle it.

The stamps and die set are available at the Visible Image store here.