You will have arrived here, hopefully, after viewing Ali H's wonderful video.
My post seems to have grown a bit long as I had a few ideas I wanted to share with you, perhaps you should quickly make yourself a batch of ANZAC biscuits and a pot of tea and get comfortable, but I kept the video nice and short for you. As a focal point for this special hop I decided to concentrate on the poppy, that enduring, emotive image of remembrance for all Australians and New Zealanders.
My first project is using a water colour technique called "underpainting" which seemed too good not to share. I first saw this process on a blog post by Nina-Marie Trapani.
My elderly Stampin' Up markers work a treat with this technique. This makes me very happy as I have never been able to get a good blending outcome with these markers previously when colouring images, now I can use them with good results.I have road tested this technique over the past couple of weeks with most of the water colour mediums I have at my disposal, including pencils, inks, Distress Inks and Oxides and paints, and they all seem to work a treat whether as a background or a focal colour...just make sure they are translucent for best results. Another post where I made a couple of other cards using this process can be viewed here.
As I said, I did not use a poppy image on the video, but I did make a card using the same "underpainting" technique "off air". I found a small square remnant of a red and yellowy green distress ink background in my backgrounds box while having a rummage, you can see it in the photo below, under the stamp image.
I used an old TT stamp called "Carefree Cosmo", (I just squinted hard and told myself it looked close enough to a poppy to be able to use it), I stamped it with Onyx Black Versafine ink on my Tonic Stamp platform and then, when dry, with Versamark ink and heat set it with clear embossing powder for a lovely black shine.
I used distress ink and SU markers to move and intensify the colour of the "poppy" image...a black card base and two old gold coloured foil mat layers completes this simple but stylish card.
This time I incorporated die cutting, embossing and layering processes - no under painting with this one!
To make this fairly constrained, none quirky box card, I used the same Annabelle Stamps poppy image as the cards above and an old dictionary page. I stamped, embossed and water coloured the card front componants and turned it all into a boxed card that contains the little card as well as an envelope sized to fit a gift card...
The main trick to these match boxes is simply to work out what you want it to contain and go from there.
In this instance, as the gift card was the item I knew I wanted to include, the envelope to pop the gift card into set the size parameters for creating the base of the box. I then simply made the little greeting card to fit inside the box. As there was plenty of height in the box I was able to add a tiny dimensional bow to the card front...
I always aim to use up my stash of remnant papers, and, as I had none of these smaller sized gift card packs left, I ended up by making three boxed sets of nine centimetre square gift or note cards while I had all the equipment out on my work bench.
These sets are each packaged in a small hand made box, with accompanying envelopes. I kept the poppy theme going in some way across all three, to a greater or lesser extent.
The poppy images I used for the card fronts and the box top of this first set were taken in my garden over spring and summer this year. The size of the image was dictated by the fact that I can print nine, six centimetre images onto a single sheet of glossy photograph paper on my Epson IJ printer. Of course, they look nice printed out for any sized card. If I am making sets of larger cards, I usually pop the images onto a usb and have them printed at our nearby Harvey Norman shop, as this saves significantly on printer ink and paper.
The gold card bases and envelopes I used are purchased four-inch square packs of six, obtained from a local discount store here in Tasmania called Shiploads. At under two dollars a pack these speed up the gift card making process very nicely.
To cut the white card stock mats for the images, I used a square stitched die a size larger than the one I used for the images. I have used off cuts of Neenah Solar White for all of these cards.
The focal pieces include water colour stamping, embossing, acrylic pouring, acrylic paint and alcohol, sage leaf printing, water colour flower painting, a lovely gold and mauve sprayed piece from the bottom of my spray box which was just too pretty to throw out, and finally, to hold the theme, a poppy napkin transfer.
I brushed the edge of each of these focal pieces with my Ranger gold acrylic paint dabber to both finish the cut edges and give them some uniformity.
To make the envelopes for this set, I used the remnants of a floral themed six inch paper pad that has been hanging fire for quite a while. I simply folded the printed floral side to the inside of the envie which leaves the outside a clean, uniform white. Has anyone else worn out their EPB? I have!
The simple little crocheted poppy flower I made to decorate the top of this box is a free copy-written pattern, (sorry, I am therefore not able to share directly here). I found it on Ravelry, but it is also available from Rebeckah Ferger's website, just follow one of the links if you'd like a copy. Thank you, Rebeckah.
Alicia
Ali F
Ali H
Di (that's me!)
Eloise
Helen
Jo
Karren
Therese
Many thanks to the super talented Therese for organising this event...thank you for inviting me, it has been a whole lot of fun and I hope you have enjoyed seeing all the amazing talent from the other participants in this wonderful "Friendship Hop",
Di x