Spring Garden cards

These two cards were made remarkably quickly and easily using the beautiful 'Spring Garden' stamp set from Stampin Up.

The long thin card was inspired by a card in the current Stampin Up UK catalogue. The stamps are just such fun to use. The quality is always superb and I honestly think Stampin Up stamps are the easiest stamps to use that I've come across too.

I love the way you get 'sets' of stamps, other than the odd stand alone that usually either a very large single stamp or a background stamp. The individual stamps within each set all work together, often in layers so to speak, as in the petals of 'Roses in Winter'.



On each card the stamps the flower stamps are 'Stampin Up', the sentiment stamped in black Stazon onto the red grosgrain ribbon is an unknown make (sorry). The inks used are again 'Stampin Up'(Rose Red, Bashful Blue and Always Artichoke).The red cardstock is also 'Stampin up'.

A 'Royal and Langnickel' white card and the blue card from a pack bought from QVC many, many moons ago. the green grosgrain ribbon is from 'Stampin Up' and the red bought from a local haberdashery department. the centre of the small flower on thee white card has a red snap; again, the origins are unknown...just part of my stash collected over time! I used a lovely apple green 'Staedtler triplus fineliner' pen for the faux stitching around the flower (I love these pens for journalling too). Finally, an Anna Griffin rub on sentiment was used on the blue card.



Anyway, I realise this sounds rather too much like an advertisement and that's not my job; I'm not in advertising I promise!! I think, if anything, I'm being rather evangelical about 'Stampin Up. When I first started card making I really wanted to do rubber stamping but always truggled to achieve the results I craved. Once I got my Marvy le Plume pens, I felt a whole lot better, getting some good quality watercolouring pencils also was a massive step and now to find such beautiful stamps that enable, nay positively encourage stampers to take stamping to that extra level; I'm just feeling really happy about my stamping right now. Best of all, I am really enjoying playing!

Watercolour technique cards

These are my latest cards. The basic design of the card uses a card project from the Hero Arts site. They have a great 'Learning Centre' with instructions regarding various techniques and projects for cardmaking and scrapbooking.

For both of these cards I used the same basic watercolour technique. I used Marvy Le Plume pens to ink the Hero Arts stamps. I then spritzed the stamped images with water from several inches away and allowed to dry.

Once the image had completely dried, I re-inked the same stamps using Versamark. I then stamped to the side of the watercolour flowers a couple of times and gently chalked with a matching colour.

The backing papers are by Joanna Sheen, the flowers are Prima. The 'Live Well' sentiment is from Rubber Stampede and the 'Angel Wishes' from Elzybells.

I'm rather pleased with my first attempt at this technique. Having said that, it has to be one of the easiest techniques whilst still producing some of the greatest results. I've stamped a few more colours in the flowers (too many irresistable Marvy le Plume colours), so I will have a play around with the backgrounds a bit more. I have a huge lace stash and it was great to make use of some of it! I especially like the lace used on the card with the Joanna Sheen lace paper. It's so pretty and very 'white' and 'clean' and I am really pleased with that card especially!