Adding Colour To Cards

I was planning to share these cards yesterday, but by the time the third one was made it was already pretty late. I do have a studio light for my photos, but they look better with natural light, which had already gone, and sorting the blog post would take a while, and I wanted to spend time with my husband so… I postponed them to today instead. It did mean I missed one challenge deadline, but I decided it was worth it in balance.

Card 1 – Wedding Arch

For my first card I started with a pink card base, and trimmed down some snippets of white card to create a diagonal element across it. Once I had them trimmed I stamped on them to create a pattern, using stamps from Lawn Fawn’s Happy Wedding stamp set. I used the large open heart on the wider strip, stamping with Delicata Pink Shimmer ink and creating a random panel. On the other two strips I chose the small solid heart to create my pattern, and used Altenew’s Mountain Mist ink.

Setting the strips aside I started working on my focal arch. I took a snippet of grey card and die cut it with two of Lawn Fawn’s Large Stitched Oval dies nested together to create an arch. I then die cut some more white snippets with Lawn Fawn’s Flower Border die. I used my Spectrum Noir Illustrator markers to add colour to the flowers, chosing a light pink for the flowers, grey for the centres, and a minty green for the stems and leaves. I trimmed the flowers off of the border, then arranged and adhered them onto my arch.

For my sentiment panel I used one of the MFT Stitched Sentiment Strips dies on a snippet of white which I coloured up by swiping with the Mountain Mist ink to tie it in with the rest of my card. I stamped a sentiment from the Happy Wedding stamp set with Soft Granite ink from Hero Arts’ Shades of Grey ink cube set. 

With all my elements ready I just had to adhere all the pieces into place. I finished off my stamped strips by edging with some peel-offs. I have no idea where these particular ones are from, but all my other peel-offs I own are Love From Lizi Peel-Offs.

Challenges:

A Perfect Time To Craft – Anything Goes

Alphabet Challenge Blog – J is for Just One Word

Color Throwdown – Color Palette

Lawn Fawnatics – Sketch

The Flower Challenge – Use A Die

Watercooler Wednesday Challenge – All About Occasions

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Card 2 – Forever Friends

My second card was a lot of fun to make, and involved a lot of alcohol marker colouring. I started by die cutting several circles of X-Press It Blending Card. I cut and stamped 7, though only used 6 in the end. I kept the negative of my die cutting and put it in my MISTI, then placed one of the circles into the opening. I positioned one of the faces from Concord & 9th’s Fashion Wear Stamp Set and stamped with MFT Black Hybrid ink. I then switched circles and repeated the process until all of my circles had the face stamped on.

Next I finished off the hair stamping on all the images. I started by stamping the bun onto two of my images, then the flat hair top on the rest. I then positioned the ponytails/bunches, stamping both on one of my circles, then just the left on one, and just the right on the other. In the end when I was done with my stamping I had 6 circles, two with bun hairstyles, one with short hair, two with side ponytails, and one with bunches.

Girl 1 -HB2, GB9, GB7, GB4, GB2, FS7

Girl 2 – DP3, TN9, TN8, TN7, EB1, RB2

Girl 3 – HB1, RB2, TN3, TN2, TN1, FS8, FS7

Girl 4 – HB2, EB4, EB1, TN3, TN2, TN1, FS8

Girl 5 – HB1, TN9, TN7, RB2, TN3, RB1

Girl 6 -DP3, GB9, EB4, GB7, EB1

As the stamping was done I started on my colouring, using Spectrum Noir Illustrator markers. This was a whole lot of fun experimentation. I first pulled out all the pens I had that could work for flesh, then mixed and matched to try different colour combinations for different skin tones.

The colours I used for the skin and hair are listed in the sides (skin on the left, hair on the right), and the girl numbers are listed from left to right, so girl one is the top left, and girl six is the bottom right.

With my skin colouring I followed the same technique I usually do, which is to start by colouring the entires skin area with a flat layer of my lightest colour, then use a purple in the shadow areas, before proceeding to work from darkest to lightest.

Girl 1 – IG6, IG2

Girl 2 – TB5, IG10, IG8, IG6, IG2

Girl 3 – GB9, TN7, GB7, BO1

Girl 4 – GB7, GB4, GY2, GB2, LY1

Girl 5 – GB9, GB7, GB4

Girl 6 -DR3, TN9, TN8, TN7, RB2

With all of the skin colouring done I moved onto the hair. I again experimented with different combinations. I feel like this is going to be a good resource to come back to! Some of the mixes include some unusual colours – the black hair starts with a dark blue, for example, and the darker red hair has an actual red in it. I didn’t colour them in order, just working through them with the combinations I thought would match the skin best. I started with the black-blue hair on one of the darker skin tones, then the reddish-blonde on the lightest. With each of the hair colours I worked from darkest to lightest, and added the colours in flicks. I generally use quite a lot of shades for my hair colours, but I did vary it as I experimented. The final hair I did was the white hair, which only ends up using two shades, and doesn’t have quite the depth of the others, but still works nicely.

I decided to add a background to each of my circles, and did this by just adding a layer of IB2 across the open space.

My original plan was to add a slight frame to each circle with a slightly larger circle of white. Unfortunately though I couldn’t find any circle dies that were only slightly larger, and the only options gave too much of a white border. In the end I cut the same size circles and shifted them slightly offset, to give a partial border. Its not quite the look I was going for, but it works well enough.

My sentiment is from the same Fashion Wear Stamp Set, and I white heat embossed it on black. I layered the black sentiment on more equally sized snippets of black to create some dimension.

I arranged all the pieces on my card base and felt I wasn’t entirely happy with it, so I pulled in the Big Swirl stencil from A Colorful Life Designs and added some tone-one-tone stenciling to the background with Altenew’s Mountain Mist ink. It actually doesn’t end up being particularly visible, but I felt it just helped pull the design together. Finally I adhered all my pieces into place, using my T-Square ruler to make sure everything was straight.

Challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More – Make Your Mark

Aud Sentiments Challenge – Anything Goes with a Sentiment

Classic Design Challenge – Anything Goes

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers – F is for F Words

Time Out Challenges – Photo Inspiration

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Card 3 – Stripey Birthday

For my third and final card of this post, I started with a piece of pink card (actually nearer paper weight) and stamped onto it with Love From Lizi’s Candystripe Background stamp and some white pigment ink. I then ran it through my die cutting machine with the small square from Love From Lizi’s Background Builder – Set One Dies. I somehow managed to rip one of the top corners off of my striped panel, so I had to trim it down which just meant the finished card would have a larger border around the striped panel.

I positioned the striped panel onto my card base and used it as a guideline for stamping my focal image, which is from Newton’s Nook’s Aloha Newton stamp set. I stamped with Versafine Onyx Black ink. I also wanted to add a background so I carefully stamped the floral cluster stamp (avoiding the cat in it) with a yellow ink just a touch darker than the card base. It doesn’t really show in the photo too well, but it shows nicely in real life. I stamped it to surround my focal image, and realised I hadn’t masked off the edges where it would show beyond the panel. I then added the florals poking outside the edge of the panel on the opposite corner of the card too, to make it seem more intentional.

With all the stamping done I coloured in my focal image with coloured pencils, keeping the colouring very simple, with just pink and yellow along with brown for the coconut.

Once the colouring was done I adhered the striped panel into place, and edged the window and the outside of the panel with Love From Lizi Black Glitter Pin Stripe Peel-Offs. As a final touch I added a die cut Happy Birthday sentiment in black, completing the card.

Challenges:

Color Hues: The Color Challenge – Yellow and Pink

Seize The Birthday – Stripes

Through The Craft Room Door – Anything Goes

Tuesday Morning Sketches – Sketch

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Those are my cards for today. Or, belatedly for yesterday, but I’m not sure what I’m going to be able to get made for today… Maybe I’ll be back with more later, maybe not. I’d love to know which of the three cards is your favourite. Mine is definitely the second card. It was really fun to make, and I think it turned out very well too.

Love,

Charlotte E (Lady Joyful) Email thejoyfulsoulcreates@gmail.com

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