Welcome to The Gray Muse Blog Hop featuring the 2020 Summer/Fall Stamp Collection! This release includes seven gorgeous floral stamp sets and one must-have sentiment set titled Social Distance!
We have some amazing guests sharing inspiration using these stamp sets so grab your favorite drink and get to hopping! I linked them all below and don't miss a reminder about the details of the GIVEAWAY at the end of this post!!!
Hopefully you made it over to me from Preeti Chandran's wonderful blog and after me, please don't forget to check out the absolutely amazing Alex Syberia. I was thrilled to be asked to participate in today's hop and hope that you will be inspired by what we all have to share.
Card 1: Dream Big, The World Needs Your Light
With so many pretties, it's hard to have a favorite, but the first image that I colored was the gorgeous Lovely Lotus Stamp Set and I think that you can see why...
This is my first time coloring on vellum, but the delicacy of the lotus flower seemed the perfect for this technique. I took photos along the way so hopefully you can experiment as well. I used a medium-weight vellum and some watercolor brush markers (Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens).
I embossed with Ranger Super Fine Silver Embossing Powder onto the vellum and was careful in my application of the heat gun so as not to damage or warp the paper.
The secret to coloring on vellum is to color on the back side of the image so that a "softened" version of the color is shown through on the front side when the image is flipped back over. (Hope that makes sense!)
To figure out my colors, I Googled a lotus flower image and eye-balled the colors I saw against my set of markers and ended up choosing the 7 markers below. You'll notice that I used the Blender as well, which came in handy for mellowing out the color and softening my lines.
I did some practicing/testing to see if my idea was possible. I used the Pink marker to color a small mark that would go at the tip of lotus petal where the pink is darkest and then used the Peach Pink marker and the Blender to drag that pink down the petal. It looks a little rough, but remember that it is the opposite side that will actually be showing.
I also put a little of the pink colors on my glass craft mat so that I could control the amount of color that I was adding to these delicate petals by picking it up with my blender pen (abuse, I know LOL) and adding it to the image.
Here is a close-up of what my first petal looked like from the back side of the image.
After adding in the pink to the petals, I worked on the stems and colored first with the Pale Green and added the Light Green to accent sections.
As you can see from the picture below you don't have to be overly precious about it, just try not to go outside the lines too often, and you'll notice that these generous embossed lines give you a lot of room for error.
I went back to my Google images of the lotus to get a photo reference for the bud; the bud was slightly more complicated as it had pink, yellow and green in it. Better than bore you to tears with my chattering, the below images should illustrate what I did. LOL
Tip: Be gentle with that yellow, you only need a hint to get the look that you are going for and whip out that Blender pen to mellow it out.
You are in the home stretch now Lovelies! Our last two colors are the Flourescent Yellow and Lemon Yellow for the heart of the "mature" lotus blooms. I used the blender to remove yellow if it got too over the top.
Tip: You can easily "clean" this bender by wiping the brush against your scrap paper.
With that, the back side (coloring side) of your image should look something like this:
Yes, she is a little unpretty, but just flip her over!
I decided to keep it very simple and finish my little beauty off with sentiments from the Lovely Lotus Stamp Set.
I hope this card lifts your spirits because it certainly made me smile!
Card 2: I Miss Your Lovely Face
Since I was having fun with vellum, I decided to do my second card with it as well. Here, I liked so many of the sentiments from the Social Distance Stamp Set that I decided to use them all...as a background.
This a simple card with beautiful embossed details and a little bit of fussy-cutting! I got started with my embossing the floral image from the Pretty Pansies Stamp Set using Wow Metallic Gold Rush embossing powder onto a piece of vellum.
Since I had the heat gun out, I also randomly stamped the leaf images from the Simple Blooms Stamp Set onto a black A2-sized card base and embossed with clear embossing powder.
I had my eye on the the "I Miss Your Lovely Face" from the Social Distance Stamp Set, so I stamped and embossed that in white onto a black strip of cardstock for my main sentiment.
With that done, I was ready for some leisurely fussy-cutting of my Pansies (Sorry about the dry hands, they are laced in powder from the anti-static bag! LOL).
My final step was to stamp all my sentiments from the Social Distance Stamp Set onto A2 white cardstock. I have to apologize though as I forgot to photo this, but because I am extremely lazy, I taped the entire set and its acrylic backing onto my MISTI and stamped everything at once in grey ink.
I then trimmed down my white "sentiment" background, so that my pansies would overlap on both sides, added some foam tape under the white background and then assembled all my layers.
I can't believe that I made a card without oodles of color, but isn't the line art on the pansies just gorgeous?!!
Card 3: To Someone Who Makes Me Smile
My last card for you today also features the Pretty Pansies Stamp Set in warm Fall colors.
Clearly, I could not get enough of the pansies, so I needed to do stamp them twice and cram them onto this slimline card front!
I did some very fancy masking (LOL, not!) to connect the two images, hopefully the photo below is helpful. The image on the right is the one that I stamped second:
I was really proud of myself until I realized that I got some ink onto the MISTI cover that then ended up on one of the petals of my pansies. I was reluctant to waste my 110lb Neenah Cardstock (and LAZY) so I decided to let that become an "Embellishment Opportunity".
If you stick with me, you will be hearing that term a lot, as it comes up every time I make a mistake! LOL
With that, I was all set for coloring! I plant Pansies almost every Fall so I didn't have to resort to my friend Google for a color reference this time :-)
Yellow Pansy 1 - Y13, 15 and 18
Yellow Pansy 2 - Y32, 35 and 38
Orange Pansy - YR01, 02, 04 and 07
Leaves - YG01, 21, 23 and 25
Pansy Centers - R56, E09 and 18
My Copic coloring skills are fairly basic, but for me there is something therapeutic about bringing an image to life with color.
I was tempted to fussy-cut this, but I ended up deciding to keep it simple and just add my sentiment from the Pretty Pansies Stamp Set in a burgundy cardstock to coordinate with my Pansy centers and cover up my ink blooper!
I threaded some gold-string under the popped up sentiment in a looping and random pattern to add some more visual pop and I was all done!
I hope you had fun at this step on the hop and sticking around for the details on the Giveaway!
Giveaway:The Gray Muse is giving away FIVE $25 gift codes to the shop so you can add some of these stamps (or enamel pins) to your collection. In order to qualify, leave comments on every post in the hop. The more posts you comment on, the greater your chances. The giveaway ends on Wednesday, September 30th at 11:59 pm Eastern Time. All winners will be selected at random and announced onThe Gray Muse Blogwithin a week.
BLOG HOP LIST:
I'm honored to be featured alongside these wonderfully talented people, get to "clicking" and get inspired! LOL
Joey V. (Instagram)