Hi everyone, it's Jenny Marples (Pushing The Right Buttons) with you today, and I'm here to share with you some inspiration for creating festive greetings cards using a selection of mini stamps designed by Zinski Art.
A colour triad that has never failed for me is to use the primary colours so I picked three of my favourites from the Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint array - 'Surf's Up', 'Haystack' and 'Red Lipstick' - and went from there.
I'm sure there will be lots of you out there busily making cards to send to family and friends through the holiday season, so I've joined in with this set of A6 cards using the Zinski Art mini houses.
Knowing the basic colours and stamps that would be used I also picked a Kay Carley snowflake stencil to give the background a winter feel in keeping with the quirky fun style.
Since it's much easier to make a batch of cards you will need a large piece of paper/card to create the background (in this case A2 cartridge paper). This can then be chopped up to fit the card blank bases.
To give the background some depth start by brayering white gesso in patches over the paper, and when dry apply a dilute solution of 'Sleight Blue' Infusions - you need to make sure all the crystals and dye pigments are mixed together to get that blue/brown tone. Finally slosh over 'Surf's Up' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint that has been diluted to roughly one parts water one part paint. Let everything air dry to allow the paper to relax and flatten itself.
I decided to brayer over random patches of another colour from the 'Surf's Up' family, namely 'Wolf Eye' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint but you could skip this step.
To finish the background apply 'Snowflake' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint through the Kay Carley stencil PS070 with a large stencil brush. The paper/card is now ready for cutting into backgrounds for each of your cards.
Time to get the houses made. This starts with a 'repeat performance' of the background, namely applying gesso, dilute 'Lemoncello' Infusions and finally dilute 'Haystack' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint to another large piece of paper/card.
Again I chose to use an A2 piece of cartridge paper to give myself the option to further alter half of it. Once dry the paper it is ready for stamping on.
Putting aside one half of the 'Haystack' paper take the other half and divide into four (4 x A4 pieces). You can now 'shift' the colour on these by applying a further coat of heavily diluted paint in shades which are close to the original but different enough to make them stand out. I chose to use 'Snowflake', 'White Fire', 'Toffee', 'Gold' and 'Pumpkin Soup' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paints.
You can see below how the original colour has been altered with just one dilute coat and by using a couple with built in shimmer you can add even more interest.
Now it's time to start creating the houses. Start by stamping the Zinski Art mini houses - ZN49, ZN50, ZN51, ZN52 and ZN56 - onto the 'Haystack' paper. These will be your base layer for each house. Cut them out and I would suggest running around the edges with a black pen if you don't want the white paper core to show.
Then stamp the houses on the four altered backgrounds, cutting out individual elements from each one (like the chimneys, windows, doors, etc) that can be added onto the base layer. Mix and match the different colour pieces to create that subtle patchwork effect.
With your houses almost finished use a fine paint brush to add little pops of 'Red Lipstick' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint before gluing your houses to the background. Add a little 'Snowflake' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint to give the impression of snow.
Add to the scene by including a line of fencing in front of the houses, including either the post box or lamp-post, applying extra snow to give a sense of depth and dimension. I would recommend stamping these extras, found in stamp sets ZN54 and ZN55, from the altered pieces of A4 paper to make them stand out more.
Finally add glitter to the snow to make it sparkle, faux stitching to create a border (a tracing wheel and permanent red pen is ideal for this) and stamp a festive sentiment of your choosing; I used one from the Sara Naumann stamp set ESN39.
Here are some close ups of my finished cards;
By starting with A2 sheets of paper you should have enough to create 30+ A6 cards that are flat enough for posting. And if you don't fancy cutting out all the extra layers for your little houses I would suggest applying the translucent paints undiluted to some of the details to create that patchwork look.
Okay, with five done I'm off to get the rest finished! Hopefully you are also now inspired to make some festive cards for your loved ones.
Jenny
