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Monday, November 27, 2017

Beautiful Blues

I made this card for a friend who has had quite a few sadnesses lately, which she has been handling so admirably that I aspire to do as well when I need to. Things like this can be especially hard this time of year I think. I just wanted to let her know I was thinking of her.

My inspiration for the colors and the dark cardstock is from a post that Yana Smakula did for some Christmas cards. You can find her post here. I am so addicted to this color combination, that I also made Christmas cards, a Sympathy card, and a bunch of Birthday cards using the same colors. I have used several different flower and sentiment stamps for these cards. I think the colors turn out to be dramatic and beautiful on the dark background.


Using the Hello Lovely stamp set from Concorn & 9th, I stamped the floral image on the left side of a dark blue piece of cardstock with Versamark ink. I embossed it with JudiKins Gold Detail embossing powder and started coloring the image. 

I used Prismacolor pencils PC1091 Green Ochre, PC1005 Limepeel, and PC919 Spring Green for the leaves. For the flowers I used PC105 Cobalt Turquoise, PC905 Aquamarine, PC992 Light Aqua, PC1009 Dahlia Purple, PC995 Mulberry, and PC934 Lavender. I especially love the combination of the blue colors, and in the Christmas cards I only used the greens and blues and not the purples.

I colored so many cards with these blue colors that I used up almost an entire pencil of Cobalt Turquoise, and I hand sharpen my pencils, so I'm not grinding them through an electric sharpener.


I had to use this pencil extender that I bought one year from Terry Medaris (no I'm sorry, I don't think the extenders are available any longer...at least if they are I don't know where you can find them) because my pencil is literally 2.25" long at this point. I looked for where I might find this color locally, but could not find it, so I sent to Dick Blick for more. (Dick Blick will sell individual colors of Prismacolor pencils very reasonably).

I stamped the sentiment from Simon Says Stamp Thoughtful Messages with Versamark ink and embossed it in matching gold.

I die cut the panel with a stitched rectangle die from My Favorite Things (MFT-463 Blueprints 13), which has a die that perfectly cuts a size 5.25" x 4" rectangle, with a nice stitched edge. I mounted the panel onto a piece of Curious Metallics Super Gold cardstock, and then onto a horizontally folded white card. At the end, I added some gems from Little Things from Lucy's Cards (clear and blue).

For some of the birthday cards I used white embossing powder, and the Sympathy card was done on black cardstock with silver embossing. When you emboss with white, there is a slight problem when you are coloring. It's difficult not to color over the embossed lines, and they they turn color and don't stay crisp white.


It can be difficult and time consuming to avoid all of the white embossing lines, and even if you manage to, some of the colors will get on the white. The pencils are intensely colored. Yana Smakula thought of an ingenious solution to this problem, but you need a stamp platform to do it successfully.

Using a stamp platform, stamp the flowers onto your panel in a color that you can see on your cardstock, and be sure to leave the stamp in your positioner. On your panel, color in all of the flowers and leaves. When you are finished coloring, put the panel back into the positioner, making sure to use anti static powder over the colored image, and stamp over your coloring with Versamark ink. Then emboss in white. The embossed image will come out crisp and clean. I don't dislike getting some color on the white, but if you want to see Yana's post and her video with that technique, click here.

To show you how this looks with silver embossing on black cardstock, below is the Sympathy card panel I made before it was mounted onto a base card. The sentiment is from Magenta 07.928.I With Sympathy.




The Christmas cards I did were embossed in gold and I used a different stamp set. I will post one soon to show you. For my Christmas cards, I'm planning to do about 10 each of at least 7 different designs (that is the plan right now anyway). I have 2 different ones nearly done so far. I will post one of each design for you as I go along.

It takes a while to color these cards, but I find it relaxing. I stamped a bunch of the Christmas ones and quite often at the end of the day I put on a podcast and just color. I love it!

Thanks for checking in with me!

Magenta Stamp
07.928.I With Sympathy

Other Products Used:
Die-namics MFT-463 Blueprints 13 die set
Versamark ink
JudiKins Detail Gold Embossing powder
JudiKins Detail Silver Embossing powder
Prismacolor pencils:
PC1091 Green Ochre
PC1005 Limepeel
PC919 Spring Green
PC105 Cobalt Turquoise
PC905 Aquamarine
PC992 Light Aqua
PC1009 Dahlia Purple
PC995 Mulberry
PC934 Lavender
Curious Metallic Super Gold 111# cover cardstock
Neenah Solar White 110# cardstock
Jewels from Little Things from Lucy's Cards:
Ice Cube Mix
Deep Pool Mix


9 comments:

  1. I just love your color combination, can't wait to try it.

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  2. Gorgeous card! Thank you for sharing the details.

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  3. I remember Yana Smakula's beautiful card. Yours are equally stunning. I love the colors and all the details. Thank you for sharing these and reminding me that I was going to try something similar too.

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  4. I am so happy I pined your post. When I read it I realized that silver holder. Lol, I took a class from Terry Medaris about 10 years ago and tucked it away. Now that I have time to organize I saw it and couldn't figure out what it was. Thanks, for helping me figure it out.Beautiful cards!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for taking the time to comment! Please visit me again soon.
Dianne