I put together this tutorial showing how to mask your card stock in order to put a sun in the background. 

Supplies:

Start out with Barely Banana card stock and punch a circle from a post it note.  You will want to punch it trying to get as much of the circle out of the sticky portion of the Post it Note.

Position your circle mask on your card stock and brayer the entire card stock with Summer Sun ink.

Sponge More Mustard ink on using a circular motion with the sponge with out going all the way to the mask.  Leave some of the Barely Banana ink showing around the sun mask.

Sponge Pumpkin Pie on in the same manner, only don’t cover all of the More Mustard Ink.

Sponge Really Rust on in the same manner only don’t cover all of the Pumpkin Pie ink.

Remove Post it Note mask.

Stamp branch using Black ink.

Stamp Bird using Stamp-a-ma-jig for positioning with Black ink.

Decided I wanted the image to be darker to the right side so I sponged on Bravo Burgundy ink.

Distressed edge of  with Tim Holtz distressing tool.

Sponged Really Rust ink on the More Mustard pieces of my layout.

Stamped weeds at bottom of More Mustard Piece of card stock.

Assembled card front and stamped additional branches on with black ink using my Stamp-a-ma-jig for placement.

Since I stamped over layers of card stock there were little gaps in my stamped image so I colored them in with a black marker.

Finished card!

I love making scenes with the emboss resist technique and I created this tutorial to show you the process.  If your up for a challenge, give it a whorl!  I would love to see your creations using this tutorial, please leave me a link to them in the comments section!

Supplies:

Note:  When working a scene with the emboss resist technique you work from foreground to the background (front of scene to back of scene).  This is so your images in front resist the ink of the images you want to look like are behind them.

I started out with Whisper White card stock and loaded my stamp with Versamark and then Certainly Celery and stamped it, heat embossed it with clear embossing powder.

I store my clear embossing powder in a plastic sandwich size container so I don’t have to mess with putting the embossing powder back into a tiny canister or cleaning an embossing powder tray.

Stamped the same stamp again only this time loading with Versamark and then Garden Green then stamping it, heat embossed it with clear embossing powder.

Loaded tree stamp with versamark and Cameo Coral ink, then went over the trunk with a black marker, stamped, heat embossed them with clear embossing powder.

Loaded house stamp with Versamark and then black ink, stamped, heat embossed it with clear embossing powder.

Used a Versamark marker and went over the entire house with it and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder.

Tore the edge of two post it notes and positioned them to cover the sky area.  You will put the torn edge where you want your horizon line to be.

Brayer Old Olive ink on.  Don’t be shy, use a lot of ink and work it into the nooks and crannies of the embossed trees and bushes.

Remove Post it Notes and wipe the Old Olive ink off of the house with a paper towel.

Next brayer on Soft Sky ink.   Brayer across the card stock, not up and down.  Start at the very top of the card stock, with most of the brayer off of the cardstock and work the brayer back and forth moving down the card stock.  Use a lot of ink and work it into the paper.  I like to leave some white card stock showing above the horizon line so I don’t brayer all the way down to the horizon line.  The more ink you put on the paper the better it blends and you won’t have those brayer lines.

Brayer on Blue Bayou ink in the same manner as the Soft Sky ink in the last step, only don’t brayer all the way down over your Soft Sky ink, leave some of it showing, we are creating a graduation in color.

Do the same process as the last two steps only using Not Quite Navy ink.  Don’t brayer all the way over your Blue Bayou ink.  Remember, lots of ink and work it in.

Sponge on Night of Navy ink around the edges of the card stock and work it into the bottom card stock in the bushes area and at the top of the card stock in the sky.

Use a White Gel pen to put in the walk way in front of the house.

Assemble card and stamp Stitched Exotics using Stampa-ma-jig and White Craft Ink.

Finished creation!

If you enjoyed this tutorial, give me a shout out in the comments section.

Hope your world is completely filled with color today!

Oh, it’s not fancy, but it’s functional, lol.   This is a glimpse of my desk in my craft room.  I call it the craft room because I have many hobbies.   Can you tell I like to have my coloring tools very, very near me when I’m working.  Prismacolor Pencils on left in a bucket, ink pads straight ahead, markers to the right.

Today I thought I would just show you how I have my Prismacolor markers organized.  I just bought this set off of e-bay for a very good price.  Set of 156 markers for $225.  They didn’t come with the rack to put them in, but that’s ok.  I had my son make me a cubby hole set up, which works wonderfully.

So now I have all of my markers in one place.  Each cubby hole for the Prismacolor markers has a tag at the top telling the number range for the markers in that particular cubby.  Makes finding a marker much easier.

Now, if you know me, you know I’m a visual person.  So I cataloged each marker, so I can quickly find a color.

I just printed out a list of the Prismacolor marker numbers and colored a stripe of that color next to it.

Hope this glimpse didn’t scare anyone.  Like I said, not fancy, but functional!

Hope your day is bright with color.

Decided to get the watercolor paper out last night and play with a new set of stamps I bought from the Basic Grey line.  These stamps are Two Scoops/Flower Swash.

Supplies:

Recipe:  On Watercolor paper, brayered on Soft Sky, Not Quite Navy and Old Olive.  Stamped Flowers and stems by coloring stamps with Stampin’ Up markers, Always Artichoke, Elegant Eggplant, huffing on the stamp and then stamping it.  Sprayed the paper then with water, really soaking it good and dropped drops of re-inker purely pomegranate where the flowers are.

Dried paper with my heat gun, restamped again using the same technique and a stamp-a-ma-jig.  Colored in the leaves and stems with a Gable Green marker and put White swirls in the flowers with a white gel pen. Center white flower was punched from Whisper White card stock.  Since the design turned out pretty wild, I decided to keep the layout very simple.  This almost went in the scrap heap last night, but I put it a side and worked on the layout this morning.  It’s growing on me, lol.

I want to answer some questions that were left here yesterday:

Chris asked, how do you go about choosing a color palette?  Well Chris, I usually use an inspiration piece for color selection.  It depends on my mood and what appeals to me that day.  When I look at art, it’s the color that grabs me first.  I keep a Microsoft Word document that I cut and paste ideas in, pictures, sketches etc.  It’s were I go for inspiration for sure.  I use to keep a notebook with ideas in it, but that got way out of hand and I was killing a lot of trees, so I’ve gone electronic.

Tina Delong asked, if I give classes or teach in any shops?  Tina, not at the present time.  Stamping is my way of relaxation and it doesn’t work for me if I put pressure on myself to make money at it.  I love to teach in a very informal setting, like here at the house, lol.  So if you are in the West Alexandria, Ohio area, let me know, we can get together and stamp some

Earline Gordon asked, Will I ever write a book about techniques?  Earline, I haven’t even thought about that at all.  My hope is to put as many techniques on this blog as I can.  So keep checking here, it’s free!

Hope your day is filled with color and joy!

I can just about find inspiration for cards anywhere.  The inspiration for this was a cute animal sign by Homespun Sentiments I seen at the Flower Factor Store in Centerville, OH.

Recipe:  Brayered Soft Sky & Not Quite Navy at top of Whisper White card stock.  Cut hills from More Mustard and Old Olive card stock and distressed the top edges of the hills with Tim Holtz’ distress tool, sponged Really Rust on the More Mustard hill and Always Artichoke on the Old Olive hill to create shadows.  Letters were cut out with my Cuttlebug out of Really Rust, More Mustard and Bravo Burgundy.  Stamped Sheep on Whisper White with Palette Noir Black ink, colored with Prismacolor Markers  and cut out with an Exacto Knife.  Assembled Card and stamped flowers on More Mustard hill with White Craft Ink. 

For the rest of the day I’ll be working on projects for the March Fan Club Gallery for Splitcoaststampers.com.  Sorry, but you will have to check out the fan club gallery on March 15th to see them.  I can’t believe it will be my last gallery.  The last five months have just flown by.   Bare with me in the next few weeks, if I’m absent from this blog for a day or two, know I am just working on my last Dirty Dozen Design Team projects. 

But, after March 15th I’m hoping to really make this blog one  people will want to come to often if they wish to learn stamping techniques.   I was a little scared to start a blog, but now that I’ve had mine up and running for all of one week I’ve found I really enjoy it!    I’m hoping you enjoy it to and come away from it each time you visit inspired.

Hope your day is one that makes you smile from ear to ear!