A little hello {Rachelle Anne Miller Creative Studios}

Hi, everyone. I’m starting the new week with a new card, featuring the Flower Garden digital stamp from Rachelle Anne Miller.

As usual, I printed the image on X-Press It blending card and colored it in using my Copics. Once done coloring, I took the second largest die in the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 2 set from My Favorite Things to turn it into a panel with nice faux stitching along the edges. I mounted it with foam tape onto my card base.

I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from InkyWings onto a tiny scrap of Raspberry Fizz card stock from Papertrey Ink. It was so small I barely even cut it smaller before adhering it to my card using Gina K foam tape, which isn’t as thick as the foam tape I used for my colored piece. I added some gems and sequins from the Iced Sherbet mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards, and my card was finished.

Colors. Not a lot, but some, with an added confession. I made a very similar card to this about six months back, and I’ve used the exact same colors on this one, except for one. Being a little lazy this time, I didn’t want to redo the entire graphic because of one single marker, so this graphic is one I’ve used before. The only color in there that I didn’t use for this card was E13, simply because I forgot.

God påske {Streamside Studios}

Hi, everyone! I have an Easter card to share today, featuring the Easter Friends slimline panel stamp from Streamside Studios. I scaled the image to fit the front of a mini slimline, and colored the image with Copics.

Soft, pastel colors throughout this one. I die cut the panel into a rectangle by doing partial die cutting twice with a stitched rectangle die from My Favorite Things. I don’t have any dies for mini slimline cards, but partial die cutting definitely works.

I added the panel to a card base made from Lavender Moon card stock from Papertrey Ink. I die cut God påske (die from Papirdesign) four times; three from white card stock and once from Lavender Moon. I stacked them and centered my dimensional die cut as best I could above the image, before finishing off with some sequins from the White Orchid Sequin Mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards. I love her mixes, they’re awesome!

My light Copic palette shouldn’t come as a surprise, pastels and spring go hand in hand.

A little bit of joy {Mo’s Dream Team}

Hi, everyone! Happy hump day and Merry Christmas? Christmas may be 9 months away, but you can bet those 9 months will fly by fast, so I’m sharing a Christmas card today, featuring Sing Joy from Mo Manning. Getting so close to the end of the alphabet of my previously unused Mo digis. This is another one I can’t believe I haven’t colored up before, it’s so cute with that cat singing along.

I colored the image with my Copics, cut the panel down quite a bit and put lots of foam tape on the back. I dug through my patterned paper Christmas scraps and found a blue piece from Papirdesign that was large enough to cover the card front, as well as a couple of smaller pieces from Maja Design.

I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment, before die cutting it with the mid size fishtail flag frame die from My Favorite Things. I added a few snowdrift sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards, and my card was all done. Super simple, and one more card in the Christmas 2021 box. Feels good to have the pile grow!

Nothing too fancy in my coloring today. The combo I used for the cat happens to be nearly identical to the one I used for the girl’s hair, I just omitted the darkest one.

Hap-pea birthday {Streamside Studios}

Hi, everyone! I’m back again, this time with super simple coloring of some peas and even some ink blending, which is kind of rare for me.

These peas are part of an upcoming stamp set from Streamside Studios. I thought they were fun and festive, and with the added punny sentiment, I couldn’t resist. I colored the peas and party hats with my Copics.

Once I’d colored the peas, I masked off each individual pea and did some ink blending across the entire panel using distress inks. I went for an orange to yellow ombre combo with Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed and Squeezed Lemonade. I placed a stencil (Dotted Flowers) from Ranger on top and ink blended again using the same colors, going in with a heavier hand. I adhered the panel to a mini slimline card base I made from Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink and used foam tape for a little bit of dimension behind the sentiment, before finishing off with some sequins from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

Simple coloring leads to a simple color palette.

You are worthy {Lili of the Valley}

Hi, everyone! I’m back with a super simple card today, featuring the pencil sketch version of Grace Kindness from Lili of the Valley. I love the loose, sketchy look of these.

I wasn’t sure what to do at first, but wound up fussy cutting the image, leaving a white trim. I usually prefer cutting right up against the edge, but I didn’t want to cut off the sketchy lines on the perimeter of the image, and decided to leave the white border. I ran a piece of white card stock through my die cutting machine using a geometric embossing folder from We R Memory Keepers. It gives the background a nice texture without being too distracting from the image.

After die cutting an eyelet circle from a Cottage Cutz die set using a piece of patterned paper from DCWV, I did some aggresive cropping to one side and mounted the remainder of the circle on my dry embossed white card stock using 1 mm foam squares. I added the white panel to the card base using regular foam tape, and added the girl on top of the circle, before finishing off the card with a heat embossed sentiment from an Altenew stamp set and a few sequins from the White Orchid sequin mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards. The blue card stock is Blueberry from My Favorite Things.

Last, but not least, the colors I used for my coloring.

A little thief {Mo’s Dream Team}

Hi, everyone! I’m back with a birthday card, this time featuring Cupcake Thief from Mo Manning. It’s a fun image, and once again I’ve gone for sherbet-y summer colors to counteract the doom and gloom outside (it’s snowing).

I colored my image onto X-Press It blending card using my Copics, before using the largest of the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX dies from My Favorite Things to turn it into a nice panel with faux stitching around the edge. I adhered it onto a card base I made from Coral Crush card stock from My Favorite Things. Sadly, the color’s discontinued, but they have loads of other gorgeous card stock colors at My Favorite Things.

I added a small cluster of scraps to the top left of my card. About half a mini doily from Doodlebug Design is at the bottom, followed by die cut pieces of patterned paper from Sunny Studio and a sentiment banner on top. I white heat embossed a sentiment from the Bitty Bears stamp set from My Favorite Things onto a banner of Peach Bellini card stock, also a discontinued MFT color.

My embellishments tend to be sequins or enamel dots centered around the sentiment on my cards. For this one, I added another two sequins in the bottom right corner, just to do something different than my standard three sequins. These sequins are from the Heaven Sent mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

I used quite a few colors for this one. For the frosting on the pink cupcake, I also used R87, which is a color I’ve created myself.

Be merry {Purple Onion Designs}

Hi, everyone! I have a very clean and simple Christmas card to share today, featuring little Timothy from Purple Onion Designs. I love this little hedgehog, he’s so cute.

My card is heavily inspired by a card Tenia Nelson shared last week on Instagram. If you don’t already follow her, you should. She has a very clean and simple style, and is a master at using white space on her cards. Occasionally, you’ll even find music performances on her feed, she’s a professional musician too! Very talented lady, definitely worth a follow!

Tenia’s card had a wide piece of washi tape going in from the right near the top of the card, with a rectangle perpendicular to the washi with a couple of small colored flowers on top, a sentiment and a few enamel dots. Once I’d ink blended a little bit using Audrey Blue and Island Blue inks from Simon Says Stamp, I tried to add a rectangle to my card, but it was too long and too wide for my liking. I scrapped that idea and die cut a polaroid frame instead for my little hedgehog to sit in. I used the second smallest die from the Precious Polaroids die set from My Favorite Things, and stacked four on top of each other for dimension. The die cut was just big enough to stamp a sentiment onto. The shortest sentiment in the Snowflake Grove Sentiment set was the perfect size.

I added a few snowdrift sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards, and my card was complete. Lots of white space, a cute hedgehog and one more Christmas card in the bank for 2021. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Super limited color palette for this tiny image.

God påske {Lili of the Valley}

Hi, everyone! We’ve reached March and the first of three glorious spring months. The weather’s getting warmer, and I took advantage big time by going on a hike for a couple of hours. About 10 kilometers and 14,000 steps, and it felt sooo good to get out. Before that, though, I colored and created a card using one of the images in the upcoming release from Lili of the Valley. Bunny Hugs is such a cute image, and I decided to make an Easter card. Easter cards aren’t really a thing in Norway, but I thought the big bunny was perfect for Easter.

I wanted a soft look to this, but at the same time, I also wanted to change things up a bit. I went with a darker skin tone than I normally do, and I really wanted a soft yellow bunny. I printed the image onto a piece of X-Press It blending card cut to 3×6″ for a mini slimline card. I adhered it to a card base I made from Lemon Tart card stock from Papertrey Ink with a 1/8″ border. I used the same color card stock to die cut “God påske” (Happy Easter in Norwegian) using a die from Papirdesign. I stacked three die cuts on top of each other and used a sparkle shimmer spray from Imagine to add lots of shimmer to the die cut. It has a really nice shimmer in real life, even though you can’t see it in the photo. To finish off the card I added a few sequins from the White Orchid sequin mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

Part of me can’t believe I used five different greens for this one, but that tiny green heart? They all fit in there!

Wishing you a happy day {Lili of the Valley}

Hi, everyone! I’ve got a card to share today, featuring one of the super sweet images from the Lili of the Valley release that’s coming next Sunday (February 14th) and some faux watercolor.

Meet Grace. She comes in seven different poses, and each pose comes in a regular black lined version, and a more sketchy pencil style version, which is what I used for my card. I thought the sketchy look would be amazing with watercolor, but watercolor doesn’t play well with the ink in my printer, so I’ve totally cheated and used Copics. Well, Copic refills on watercolor paper, to be exact. Works like a charm and you get soft results, it’s fast to do and you don’t need a lot of colors. And for a sketchy style image like this, it doesn’t even matter if you go outside the lines a bit, it adds to that watercolor feel. I used this technique years ago (blog post here, written in Norwegian), it was fun to pull it back out and try it with a digital stamp.

I wanted all the focus to be on the image, and used the Fine Frames Cover die with some patterned paper from Papirdesign in a soft, matching purple, adding dimension behind every other frame (the wider ones), while gluing the others straight onto the card base.

I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from the Statement Flowers stamp set from Altenew, before adding a few sequins from the White Orchid Sequin Mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

Very limited color palette. I put a drop or two of color onto my glass work surface and picked up the color with a watercolor brush filled with blender solution instead of water. I have a watercolor brush just for blender solution.

Merry & Bright {Purple Onion Designs}

Hi, everyone! I know Christmas is far away, but somehow, I have another Christmas card to share anyway, featuring the adorable Jolly snowman from Purple Onion Designs. I love how happy he is looking up at the sky, and my initial plan was to turn him into a wintery birthday card, but plans change…

I didn’t have any birthday sentiment dies that fit my slimline plan, but this Stacked Merry die from My Favorite Things was perfect. I die cut four from white card stock and stacked them for a dimensional look, before adding embossing powder on top and heat embossing for a shine that matches the embossed snow in the background. I stamped “& bright” from the Holiday Messages sentiment set onto Blue Yonder card stock from My Favorite Things and white heat embossed. I added my colored piece with the sentiment onto a card base made from that same Blue Yonder card stock and added a few snowflake sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards close to the snowman and the sentiment, finishing off the card with a trail of snowflakes.

I used quite a few colors for this very simple image. Building color to create contrast is key when doing no line coloring, and the first 7 markers in this graphic were all used for the snow. It might be difficult to tell from the photo, but the orange combo I used for carrot is  different than the combo I used for the scarf and pocket, which isn’t as bright a combo in real life.