I’m proclaiming this week “Art Inspiration Week” here on my blog. Why you ask?  Because I can, lol. 

I love art and find so much joy in trying to recreate a masterpiece with rubber stamps, ink and embossing powder.   My pieces always fall short of the original, but I learn tons along the way.  So join me this week and hopefully you will be inspired.

Today I drew my inspiration from a painting by Anouska Vaskebova titled “Pansies II”.  Here is a picture of the original.

Isn’t it stunning!

Well let’s get started on the tutorial.

Supplies:

Stamped two pansies with Elegant Eggplant ink and one with Bravo Burgundy ink on Whisper White card stock.

Using my Aqua Painter and just plain water I went over the pansies.   The dye ink will bleed so it gives a watercolor effect.

Colored the center of the flowers with an Apricot Appeal marker.

Colored dark areas of the stamped images on the Elegant Eggplant flowers with my Aqua Painter and Elegant Eggplant ink.

Note:  Squeeze the closed ink pad and you will get a puddle of ink on the lid in which to use for watercoloring.

Traced the outline of the Elegant Eggplant flowers with an Elegant Eggplant marker.

Colored the dark areas of the Bravo Burgundy flower with an Aqua Painter and Bravo Burgundy ink.

Traced the outline of the Burgundy flower with a Bravo Burgundy marker. 

Oops, missed taking a photo, added a touch of black marker to the center of the flowers to give a nice contrast to the yellow centers.

Colored over the flower images with a Versamark marker being careful to stay within the image lines.

Heat embossed images with clear embossing powder and a heat gun.  Note:  heat embossing your images will make them darker

Since the flowers are heat embossed they will resist ink stamp over them so we are free to put in a second row of flowers.

Stamped second row of flowers, one in Bravo Burgundy and one in Elegant Eggplant.  Repeated the same coloring steps as in the first row of flowers.

Colored over the second row of flowers with a Versamark marker and then heat embossed them with clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

Stamped leaves with Always Artichoke ink.

Colored the leaves lightly with an Aqua Painter and Always Artichoke ink.

Created a shadow on the leaves by putting more Always Artichoke ink at the bottom half of the leaves with an Aqua Painter.

Went over the leaves with a Versamark marker and heat embossed them with clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

Now it’s time for a flower pot.  I dug out one of my long neglected shadow stamps and stamped the pot with Hazelnut ink, stamping off once on my scrap paper before stamping on my card stock so the image would not be so dark.

Went over flower pot with a Versamark marker and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

Now it’s time to put in the counter and wall.

Masked wall area with post it notes.

Brayered on the counter area with Barely Banana ink.

Sponged on So Saffron ink using a pouncing motion so the color is broken up little specks.

Sponged on More Mustard ink, not covering all of the So Saffron ink.

Lightly sponged a little Always Artichoke ink at the top of the counter area, where it meets the post it note.

Removed the post it notes and then add new ones to mask the counter area.  Note:  Didn’t mask a little bit of the counter at the top so I wouldn’t get a white line between the wall and the counter and they would blend together better.

Brayered on Cloudy Blue ink.

Used side “B” of a marble texture cube and Cloudy Blue ink at the bottom of the wall and top corners.

Stamped side “C” of the marble texture cube with Not Quite Navy ink at the bottom of the wall and the top left corner.

Sponged, using a pouncing motion, Not Quite Navy ink at the bottom and top corners of the wall.

Lastly, sponged a little Night of Navy ink not covering all of the Not Quite Navy.  Also, put a few very light spots of Night of Navy in the light areas of the wall to try to create a little texture.

Removed post it note masks and wiped the ink off of the embossed images with a paper towel being careful to stay on the embossed images with the paper towel.

Assembled card and here it is finished.

Thanks and hugs to all of you who left me such wonderful encouraging comments yesterday.  Now that I know so many of you fantastic, big hearted stampers are looking at my tutorials I will continue the best I can in posting them even though the weeds are growing in my gardens.  They do have pretty yellow flowers on them, lol.

Have a fantastic day!

Until tomorrow. . . . . .

Last night I decided to challenge myself and use a fairly complicated piece of art as inspiration.  The original art was created by Megan Aroon and it’s titled Blue Essence.

Isn’t it beautiful!

My card doesn’t even come close, but it was a learning experience.

Here is tutorial #40.

Supplies:

Stamped trees on Whisper White card stock by first loading stamp with Versamark and the loading it with black ink before stamping.

Heat embossed image with clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

I used a glass mat and Exacto knife to cut a curved portion from the post it notes.   I then stuck them to the card stock for a mask for the sky area.

Sponged Cool Caribbean ink on un-masked area.

Sponged Brilliant Blue ink just at the edge of the post it note.

Moved the mask down some and sponged Brilliant Blue ink again right at the post it note masked edge to create another line of Brilliant Blue.

Moved the post it note masks again so I could create the small hill at the right side.  Sponged Cool Caribbean ink on the open area.

Sponged Brilliant Blue ink at the edge of the top post it note.

Moved the post it note mask down a little and put in a second line of Brilliant Blue ink.

Removed post it notes and went over hills with a Versamark marker and then heat embossed using clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

Cut a circle from the middle of a post it note with a 1 1/4″ circle punch.  Placed mask where I wanted the sun to be and sponged More Mustard ink on using a circular motion.

Sponged Really Rust ink around edge of sun using a circular motion.

Removed post it note mask and went over the sun with a Versamark marker and heat embossed using clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

Stamped Dots on sky area by first loading stamp with Versamark, Soft Sky ink and stamping off one time on my scrap paper before stamping on the card stock.  After stamping all of the dots, heat embossed them with clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

Randomly in the sky area, applied Real Red ink using direct to paper technique and only using a corner of the stamp pad.  Note:  the corner of the stamp pad makes those little “V” markers.

Using same technique, applied Hazelnut ink to sky area.

Using same technique, applied Aqua ink to sky area.

Using same technique, applied Butterscotch ink to sky area.

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Using same technique, applied Broken China ink to sky area.

Using same technique, applied Brilliant Blue ink to sky area.

Wiped ink from embossed images with a paper towel.

Assembled card after using a cuttlebug embossing folder on the More Mustard panel.  Here you have it, the complete card.

This is the 40th tutorial I’ve posted to this blog.  Do you want more or is 40 enough?  Encouragement is greatly appreciated by way of comments, especially during gardening season when I should be weeding, lol.

I hope you find a piece of art today that inspires you and makes you want to recreate it.  It’s such a great learning tool!

Until tomorrow. . . . . .

Happy Sunday! 

I took a break from blogging on Saturday in order to meet, for the first time, a fellow Split Coast Stamper, Karen Barber, (aka on SCS as Karen B Barber) .  We started by meeting for lunch at Twin Creek Tea Room in my little country town of West Alexandria, OH.  Here is the link if you want to check it out http://www.twincreektearoom.com/, yum yum.  After that we, of course, did some brayering and stamping at my house.  Here is a shout out to Karen, my new stamping friend!

Ok, on with the tutorial!

Supplies:

Stamped Cornish Heritage Farms stamp “Who’s that? Horse” on Whisper White card stock with Palette Noir Black ink.

I watercolored the horse using Creamy Caramel ink and an Aqua Painter.   Note:  if you squeeze your ink pad while it is closed it makes a puddle of ink on the lid that you can use for water coloring.  I happened to have a reinker in Creamy Caramel so I put a few drops of reinker on the lid area to work with.

Using the same ink, Creamy Caramel and the Aqua Painter I went over the image’s shadowed areas to make them darker.

Went over entire image with a Versamark Marker being very careful to stay within the image lines.   Heat embossed image using clear embossing powder and a heat gun.  Note:  This will make your image darker in color.

Stamped flowers on ground area using a Versamark Pad.  Heat embossed flowers using clear embossing powder and a heat gun.

Brayered Cool Caribbean ink over sky area.

Brayered Old Olive ink on the ground area.

Brayered Always Artichoke ink at the bottom of the card stock.

Brayered Taken with Teal at the top of the card stock.

Wiped ink off of embossed images with a paper towel.  I will do this again after I am done with this panel.

Sponged Taken with Teal ink at the top of the sky to create some interest.

Decided I wanted my  foreground to be darker, so I sponged on Always Artichoke at the bottom of card stock.

Used my distressing tool on the card stock edges.

Sponged Walnut stain distress ink on edges.

Also, sponged Walnut Stain Distress ink on the edges of my Creamy Caramel card stock panel.

Assembled card and here it is completed.

Hope your day is filled with daisy fields and sunshine.

Until the next post. . . . . . .