2022 Topic 14 : Colour Study: Triads {by Jenny Marples} with Zinski Art stamps

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

Blog: https://pushingtherightbuttons.blogspot.com/

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2021 Topic 9: Baubles & Bling with EKC {by Kay Carley}

  2021 Topic 9: Baubles & Bling

With a non-traditional colour scheme, using gorgeous pinks and purples that Kay is well known for, she's created some wonderful hanging bauble cards which, at first glance seem like CAS cards, but if you look carefully she's created subtle layers with such a gentle sparkle.
~ Keren.

Hi everyone, it's Kay with you today, and I'm here to share with you some simple Christmas card makes.

For this project I wanted to show you why I designed my bauble stamp set (EKC22) with plain baubles. This was to give you scope to have lots of different decorated baubles. You can simply stamp them onto patterned paper if you want really quick and easy decorated baubles or you can use stamps/stencils to add decoration to them. Another option is to doodle into them!

For this project I have used stamps that are contained on (EKC22) to decorate my baubles.

To begin I pulled out the stamp set and stencil that I wanted to use for this project - namely (EKC22) and (PS070) and then made a decision as to what colours of Fresco Chalk Acrylic paints I wanted to use for the baubles. I also had in mind for my 'bling' element to use a twinkly embossing powder so I reached for my WOW! Twinkling Lights EP.

My first step was to begin creating a background onto panels of 340gsm Smoothy card stock. For this, I used stencil (PS070) with Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Snowflake). 

 

I had toyed with the idea of using (Metallic Glaze) for my background but in the end as I knew there would be lots of twinkle being added to the card later on I thought it best to go with subtle interest at this stage! 

 

To be able to stamp different elements into the baubles I needed to create some masks.

The masks were achieved by stamping each of the baubles into the middle of an A4 piece of paper. 

 

 

I used a craft knife to cut out the middle of each bauble. (I keep these masks [both the aperture and the solid bauble] so that they can be used time and time again.)

Next I painted a panel of 240gsm Smoothy card stock with Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Snowflake) before stamping and painting the background of the baubles within a stamping platform.

As I was going to be cutting out the baubles and adding them onto my cards I wasn't careful with my painting. The photo below shows what they looked like before I re-stamped them.

For these baubles I used (Caribbean Sea) and (Globe Thistle) for my base layers and then added a watered down mix of (South Pacific) for the turquoise bauble and (Purple Wine) for the purple bauble. The hanging element was painted with (Gold). Once the baubles were re-stamped I then added my decoration using the WOW! Twinkling Lights embossing powder along with some doodles using a white gel pen. (These particular baubles didn't require those paper masks but all my other baubles did!).

The next photo shows how the baubles were stamped and embossed with the small holly element contained on the stamp set along with some doodled white pen. The colours of Fresco Chalk Acrylics I used were (Globe Thistle), (Purple Wine), (Caribbean Sea), (South Pacific), (Bubble Gum), (Bougainvillea) and (Gold).

These baubles were decorated using the little background stamp contained on the stamp set instead of the holly.

Next I needed to stamp and emboss my different sized card panels.

As I was working with a glittery embossing powder I made sure to dust my panels first with an anti-static bag. Without dusting first I knew I would struggle to get nice clear twinkly imagery as my large holly stamp is quite intricate!

As you can see I just adapted my stamping and embossing to suit each of the different sizes of card panels. The panel sizes I used were DL, 6" x 6" and 7" x 5".

 

To finish I adhered my card panels to card blanks and curled the baubles a little by bending them over my fingers before adding them to the cards with 3D pads.

I used a gold glitter glue for the string to hang my baubles. To give me a guide to follow I first drew the 'string' very lightly with pencil and then traced over with the glitter glue.

Crystal glitter glue was used onto the holly leaves and dotted around randomly onto the card blanks to finish off.

As you can see, having baubles that you can decorate yourself gives you a lot of scope on creating a variety of Christmas cards. As I mentioned at the very start, one of the quickest and easiest things you can do is to stamp the baubles onto pre-printed patterned paper or onto any background pieces that you have created yourself and may have left over from other projects.  

I chose a modern colour scheme for my baubles but you can easily give them a more traditional feel by choosing a red and green colour scheme. Plus if you have a lot of cards to make you can omit the stamping and embossing of the background panels and go for a very clean and simple look. Or you may have a pine branch stamp in your collection that you could 'hang' the baubles from instead and of course you can stamp the baubles directly onto your card blank if you don't want them to look 'dimensional'. Lastly, being that the baubles are all separate stamps easily enables you to adapt your layout depending on the size of project/card you are creating. Lots of possibilities!

Love Kay x

Blog: Kays Crafty Corner
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At this current time, all of my teaching is being done online. You can find details of all of my past and current online workshops over on my Crafting with Kay Carley Facebook Group.