Hi, crafty friends. It’s been a while since my last post. Things have been crazy busy this past month, and I’ve had zero time in my craft room, and not even time to write blog posts for cards that were finished before things went bananas. The annual holiday sale from Purple Onion Designs is a great way to come out of hibernation, though.
Winter and Balsam from the latest Christmas release from Stacey Yacula are exchanging gifts. They both look pretty happy to be out in the snow in front of Santa’s workshop. I snuck in the Santa silhouette in the sky and stamped a sentiment from the Santa Sentiments set in the snow.
I love creating these scenes with Stacey’s images. It’s a time consuming process, as I create masks for each critter and fussy cut them, but the end result is always worth it.
I stamped Winter and Balsam using Extreme Black ink from My Favorite Things before covering both of them with masks. I then did second generation stamping of Santa’s workshop using Memento Rich Cocoa ink, using first generation for the signage only. I like the softer look of the brown lettering in the background. I stamped the silhouette of Santa’s sleigh using VersaFine Onyx Black ink AFTER I’d colored in the entire scene. This is an ink that stamps very black and very crisp, but it’s a pigment ink and doesn’t play well with Copics, so it’s best to leave it to the end. I stamped the sentiment using Blueberry Sky ink from Papertrey Ink.
I also went back over the “cast iron” of the OPEN sign using a 0.3 cool gray multiliner from Copic and added white dots on the penguin’s hat and scarf using my white Gelly Roll 05.
I sprinkled on chunky white embossing enamel from Stampendous, melted the granules from the back of the paper and adhered my finished scene onto a 5 3/4 x 4 1/2″ white card base, making this card slightly larger than the regular A2 size card.
Lots of Copics used for this one.
There are some awesome stamps in the Black Friday – Cyber Monday deals category over at the Purple Onion Designs store, a few of my very favorites even. Take advantage of this massive sale while you can.
Whenever the design team members get a glimpse of the new collection, I start my planning process. I sketch out very rough card ideas using the stamps I’d like to work with, send my stamp wish list off to Michele, the owner of Purple Onion Designs, and then wait patiently for the stamps to arrive.
Whenever there’s a new collection I like to create scenes to show off as many of the cute images as possible (without overcrowding the card), and for this card I stamped 
I always start by coloring the sky, and for this collection, I wanted each of my cards to have a different sky. I tend to go for all blues, but winter sunsets are explosions of color, so I was very conscious of that when I created my card. Once the sky was done, I colored the snow, followed by the trees and that cute fence, before starting with the rest of the scene.
I colored the critters, then the arch and finally all the red. I always leave the red details to the very end. It eliminates the chance of smearing and getting red ink where you don’t want it when you go in with another color right next to it. I wrote Happy Holidays with a black 0.35 Copic pen before coloring, but once the red was colored, you could hardly see the lettering, so I went back over with a white 05 Gelly Roll pen, and the text is much more visible now. My Ps are a little further apart than I’d like, and they’re also leaning a tiny bit to the right, but it’s a homemade card, it’s not supposed to be perfect, right?
Whenever I create these scene cards with Purple Onion images, I always let the stamping and the scene itself dictate the size of the finished card. This one wound up at 5 1/4 x 5 1/4″, which seemed pretty perfect. I haven’t made a square card in a while, so this was fun.
I used an obscene amount of Copics for this card.
For this card, I chose 
I didn’t want a dark night sky for this card. I also didn’t want it to have a basic blue sky, because I wanted to add lots of snow, and it doesn’t really snow from clear skies. I opted for a soft blue violet combo that wasn’t too dark and that fit the snowy scene look I was after.
When everything was colored, I stamped a sentiment from 
I sprinkled on a generous amount of chunky white embossing enamel from Stampendous, making sure no granules covered up the critters’ eyes or the sentiment, before melting the granules from the back of the panel. I then adhered it directly to a top fold white card base, and my card was complete.
Lots of Copics for this one.
I created a very simple scene for this card, stamping the snowman in Fadeout ink from Inkon3 before adding a mask, then stamping the 
Every once in a while, I break out my airbrush system. I actually keep it out on my desk, but I have a big desk and don’t usually sit close to it. I love the airbrush system, it’s such an awesome way to get a layer of color quickly. Coloring an entire nighttime sky with Copics takes a while, airbrushing it is faster. Use colors that are darker than what you think you want, and make sure there’s enough ink in the marker before starting. I used B99 and B97 for this sky, and it’s wonderfully dark and the perfect backdrop for the lighter colors of the snowy scene in front.
Once I finished the airbrushing, I carefully removed the masks and did no line coloring of the rest of the scene. At this point, I’ve colored snow so often, I can do it in my sleep. This snowman is pretty easy to color too, most of the areas are pretty big surfaces, so it’s a very forgiving image.
After I finished my coloring, I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment in the sky. The sentiment is actually from the Scripty Xmas stamp set from Mama Elephant, I kind of forgot for a second that I was creating a Purple Onion card, I was a little lost in a creative zone. After heat embossing the sentiment, I sprinkled on chunky white embossing enamel from Stampendous to create my super snowy scene, making sure to remove any granules that landed on top of the embossed letters before melting the granules from the back.
I trimmed 1/8″ off each side of my scene and adhered it to a white card base I created from white cardstock from Papertrey Ink, deciding not to add any embellishments. I figured there was enough going on already with all the snow.
As usual – lots of colors used for the snow. The two blues at the very bottom after the break are the colors I used for the airbrushed sky.
Using the Itsy Bitsy Polka Dot Backdrop die from Lawn Fawn, I die cut a panel of white cardstock from Papertrey Ink to add a little bit of texture to the front of my card. I adhered it to a quarter panel of Blue Breeze cardstock from My Favorite Things, before using the Selfie Square die, also from My Favorite Things, to die cut a window in the top center.
I put foam tape on the back of my polka dot panel and adhered it to my colored piece, making sure to line up the image so it would show trough the window the way I wanted it to. I then grabbed a quarter panel of Jalapeño Popper cardstock from My Favorite Things and used my G99 Copic marker and scribbled it close to the edge of the green cardstock to make the color match my car a little bit better. Green cardstock is tricky, and I don’t often find the right kind of green that I want for my projects. This was an easy hack, but if anyone out there has a suggestion for a green cardstock that is close in color to G99 (or G94), please let me know.
I adhered my improved green cardstock to an A2 top fold white note card and mounted the polka dot piece with the colored window using foam tape – lots of it. I then used the same Blue Breeze cardstock that I used previously to cut the word merry three times using the Merry Script die from Mama Elephant. I love their script dies! On the top layer I spritzed sheer shimmer craft spray from Imagine for a bit of sparkle to the letters. Unfortunately, details like that are tricky to photograph, but it’s definitely noticeable in real life, trust me 🙂
Onto a leftover scrap of X-Press It blending card, I scribbled an even layer of G99 to create a dark green cardstock that would match my colored image. Onto it, I white heat embossed the word 
I love my Copics and used quite a few for this rather simple image.
I stamped April (the bunny on the swing), masked off the rope of the swing, stamped the 
When I color full panels like this, I usually color the sky blue, but I wanted to shake things up a little for this card and gave it a soft sunset vibe instead. I live far enough north that the sun doesn’t really set until really late at night in the summer, but a girl can pretend, right? Anything goes when it’s a card, it doesn’t have to be very realistic – not that a bunny on a swing (or one holding a flower for that matter) is very realistic to begin with.
I lost track of how many layers of green I added for the grass. I wanted it to be light and soft looking almost fading into white in the background to make the foreground stand out, and darker in the foreground so the critters would look like they belonged to the scene. I started with the lighter colors for my blends, then kept introducing darker greens towards the bottom and fading up into the background until I found the intensity I was after.
Once I finished coloring in the scene, I added a sentiment from the 
I trimmed off 1/16″ on all four sides of my colored panel and adhered it to a white card base I created from Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I thought about leaving the panel a full size, but I really like the border the white cardstock gives, it’s a nice little frame.
I find it odd that I rarely use more colors for full panels like this than just a simple image, but that tends to be how it is around here.
I stamped 
I colored the entire panel with Copics, deciding to add a few clouds in the sky as well as some visible blades of grass near the trees.
I adhered my colored panel onto a top fold landscape A2 card base I created from Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I stamped a sentiment from the 
To finish off the card I added a few pearls from Kort & Godt in three different sizes (2 mm, 2.5 mm, 3 mm). Adding the pearls was actually my niece’s idea. I tend to go for sequins myself, but I love pearls too and hadn’t used these in a while, so it was good to break them out.
The lack of dimension makes this a very thin, lightweight card compared to my normal cards, which means this won’t have any problems going through the mail.
Not a lot of colors given that the entire card front is colored.
This time I’m keeping the focus on 
I used a lot of green for this card. Not too many markers, but I feel like most of the card is green. I actually had to refill all the greens I used for the fields and trees halfway through. They hadn’t been refilled in a couple of years, so it was about time, I use these greens a lot.
I needed a pop of color to counteract all the green and decided on a corally pink color combination that I used for the party hat and balloon. I dug through my colored cardstock looking for a match, and wound up with Fire Coral cardstock from My Favorite Things. I created a top fold A2 card base from it and adhered my colored panel onto it to the left side, it wasn’t wide enough to cover the entire card front.
In the fall of 2020 I was running seriously low on X-Press It blending card, which is the only cardstock I use for my Copic coloring. It was hard to get hold of back then, but I lucked out and got a pack from Amazon UK. It was A4, which kind of blew my mind a little bit. Up until that point, I didn’t even know A4 X-Press It existed, I’ve always bought letter size. A4 is less wide and taller than letter size, which means I only get two panels that cover an A2 card front from one sheet. I used one of the narrower pieces on this card, which left me with about 1/4″ extra width on the card base. I debated cutting it off, but I feel like the pink strip on the right provides a little bit of balance, the card would be very green without it.
Onto a separate piece of Fire Coral cardstock, I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from the Til mannen stamp set from Norsk Stempelblad AS, before die cutting it using a speech bubble die from Altenew. I popped it up on 1/16″ foam squares from Gina K for a tiny bit of dimension.
You’d think that with a close to full panel of coloring that I’d use a lot more colors than this, but the four greens near the left end of this graphic were all I used for the grass and the trees, which covers most of the card.
I really wanted to create a birthday card with 
I colored in my scene using Copics. I started with the sky (I don’t even remember what color I used there, sorry), before coloring the trees, the ground, then the critters. I struggled with my colors on this one. I wanted the trees to be a muted green way back in the distance, but the colors I used felt too gray, so I added a couple of more vibrant greens to make them come alive a little bit more.
I managed to make the same mistake with the ground. I originally wanted a muted green, because most of the green backgrounds I’ve colored using stamps from this release have been very vibrant. As it turns out, I’m not as big a fan of the muted green look when it’s down on paper as opposed to what I envision in my head before I start. I was originally only going to use three green markers for the ground, I ended up with eight, and I’m still not entirely happy with it. It’s messier than what I’m used to, and I struggled with the blending.
I used the largest die from the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 set from My Favorite Things to turn my colored panel into one with a nice faux stitch edge, and adhered it to a top fold A2 card base I created from Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I love the look of the faux stitch with that thin white border going around the edge. For my sentiment I die cut the Happy Birthday Brush Script die from Simon Says Stamp four times from white cardstock and glued them together for a stacked, dimensional look, and I had just the right spot to adhere it to the card.
At that point I thought the card was a little plain and decided to add some “flowers” by drawing in white dots in a few clusters on the green grass. This adds a little bit of interest, but I still didn’t think it was enough, so I pulled out my Frosted Lace Stickles and added a thick layer to the balloon, before deciding to also add it to the die cut letters. This helped a little more, but I felt like I needed another element in the sky, it was still pretty plain. Using the Cloud 1 & 2 die set from Papertrey Ink, I die cut four small clouds from vellum. I glued two and two together and adhered them to the sky, which really helped pull the entire design together. This was an evolution of a card (I also colored the bird yellow to begin with, but decided I wanted it red and colored red over the yellow), but it came together in the end.
I used quite a few Copics for this one. I have a feeling I may have used B00 for the sky, but I’m not entirely sure.
I stamped and masked all these critters. From left to right we have 
There are two sentiments that come with Petunia that you can stamp in the banner. One is the hip hip hooray!, which I white heat embossed, the other says Happy birthday! This card is a bit of an odd size. I needed it big to fit all my images, and it measures 7 1/4 x 5 1/16″. I probably could have trimmed off a little bit on the sides and on the bottom (or top) to make it an even A7 size, but this is what I wound up with. I’ll probably make my own envelope to fit anyway.
Lots of Copics used for this one. I tried to make the colors of the critters different even though I have two brown ones and two gray ones. I love the Copic range of earth tones and gray tones, it really does allow you the option to create different colors within the same color family.
Papirmølla 