SLMPetersen

Life has a way of throwing a few curve balls. I made the decision in early August to get serious about a few things, one of which was daily blog posting.  I made it through a little more than a month before my train started to derail, through no real fault of my own.  I don't share a lot of my personal life, but this is overlapping my creative life and I felt you deserved a bit of explanation. On the first of September, my wonderful Hubby broke his foot.  Because we live in rural Alaska, there is a lot of driving involved to see all the specialists when working through this kind of injury.  Hubby has been on crutches and in a walking boot for nearly four weeks, leaving the heavy lifting to me.  It's really quite amazing how much we take for granted the simple things like taking a plate to the table or carrying a cup of coffee.   We are now a bit more settled into a routine now.  I working hard to get back on track with writing after several week...

I watched Erum Tasneem's video - Watercoloring Altenew Statement Florals a couple of months ago and fell in love with the card idea. It just took me a little while to get around to trying the technique.   I really love this card and how it turned out.  For my version of this technique, I switched the orientation of the flower to the bottom and faded my blue background up. To start the card I stamped the Wild Peonies in VersaFine ink on Canson XL watercolor paper.  I used clear embossing powder, as I never have good luck with black.  Once my image was embossed I pulled out the watercolors. I kept the colors simple and used water to keep my shading simple, more water for lighter colors, and less water for more intense colors.  I used Windsor and Newton Cotman watercolors in Sap Green, Purple Lake, Cadmium Yellow, and Intense Blue. To complete the card I the Simon Say Stamp Happy set and the Avery Elle Sentiments Too set to build the sentiment Happy Annivers...

Once I got on board the Copic marker train I fell in love. I would say Copic coloring is my second go-to technique for making cards.  My first love will always be ink blending, but we're here today to talk about Copic coloring.   I learned to use my Copic markers watching dozens of YouTube videos, specifically Kelly Taylor videos .  Kelly is a colorist and card maker, with a skill for crafting scene cards.  Watching her videos taught me how to blend a rainbow of colors to create something other than a traditional color blend of light, medium, and dark in a color family.  For today's card, I'm using the tips I've gleaned over the years of watching Kelly's videos . I started this card by stamping the birch leaf from the Tim Holtz Autumn Blueprintsketch stamp set in Gina K Amalgam ink.  I added the sentiment from Colorado Craft Company's Thankful set.   In the Fall, birch trees turn from a yellow-green to a golden yellow.  With that in min...

Woodgrain paper might be one of the more interesting papers in my stash of goodness.  Tim Holtz knew what he was doing when he brought this to market.  I've used it for any number of Christmas card projects, and my go-to look was as a white-on-white kind of background, but then I watched  Tim Holtz's video Demo:  Distress Paint .  Magic was sparked. The idea for this card actually started with the bee I'd cut and pieced together.  The yellow wings and body were cut from a background in my stash.  I often make backgrounds for use later in projects like this.  I had visions of putting this bee on wood as if it had landed on an old fence or barn.  The idea grew from there with the decision to make a set of cards using all of the bugs in the die set. While I don't yet own any sprays I was able to create beautiful woodgrain with my Distress Inks & Distress Oxides to build my wood color.  I used a combination of blending tools and ink pads...

Studio Notes, today I wanna talk about craft mats. The options are wide and varied - glass, self-healing, silicone, magnetic, sticky, non-stick, foam, heat-resistant, and grippy.  there are also a variety of sizes available.  The options can be crazy overwhelming.  In the end, my advice would be to choose the mat or mats that fit your crafting style.   Currently, you'll find three mats in my studio - self-healing, glass, and non-stick.  I've researched some of the other options and am giving some serious consideration to snagging one of the Tim Holtz Media Grip Mats.  The Media Grip Mat is designed to be cut to size for your needs.  I would be cutting it to size to use mostly in my ink blending with stencils in conjunction with my glass mat.  I currently use Sizzixs Sticky Grid for holding my piece in place while ink blending, more on that in a future post. Self-Healing Mat: I refer to this one as my everyday mat.  I have had a couple d...

For this week's Shop Your Stash you'll need patterned paper, a large word die, and a large shape die.  We'll be building a clean and simple layered card.  The goal is to shop your stash, but as always I've provided shopping links below the post. If you've been making as long as I have you probably had a stash of patterned paper somewhere that is collecting dust. I've been working on cutting mine into card panels for future projects.  When the creative block hits I pull a stack of 12x12 paper and cut it down.  Often times the pattern will spark an idea and I'm off to the races.  It's surprising how inspiring this can end up being.   Patterned paper can also be a quick and easy way to create multiples of any clean and simple design.  From every sheet of 12x12, I can get six, 4 x 5 1/4 inch card panels.  This means I can easily make six of the same card design.  If I love the pattern, I  opt for a card design that is clean and simple a...

I recently purchased a few of the Big & Bold stamp sets from Colorado Craft Company.  The images in these stamp sets are much larger than the standard A2 size card, but that didn't stop me from using this large perfume bottle.   I stamped the large image on the left side of the card with parts of the image hanging off of the white panel using Gina K Amalgam ink.  Gina K's Amalgam ink is Copic safe, meaning that once dry alcohol markers won't smear the stamped image.   The flowers were colored with RV10, RV000, V95, and V91.  I used YG67 and YG17 on the leaves.  I created a bit of a shadow on the perfume bottle with B000, to give an effect of glass.  The labels on the bottle were colored in BV31and BV23. To the right side of the panel, I added some ink blending with the mini dots stencil from Echo Park with a bit of Tumbled Glass Distress Ink.  After the ink blending, I cut the panel with the Simon Says Stamp stitched rectangles. To c...

Taylored Expressions has some fun and unique stenciling products, including the stamp and stencil set I used on this card.  I love my ink blending and stencils but decided to kick it up a notch on this card, after watching Kelly's video -  Hero Arts Holiday Catalog, Holiday Birds & Wreaths .  She added depth and dimension to a stenciled wreath and it seemed like the perfect way to punch this card up a bit.   With this set, the leaves of this bouquet are stamped with a red rubber stamp before layering the flowers to build the bouquet.  Each stencil in the set is etched with outlines of the leaves, making it easy to line up each stencil layer.  When building this card, I used Distress Inks for stamping the leaves, as well as the ink blending.  Yes, you can stamp with Distress Inks.  In my opinion, stamping with Distress Inks creates a smoother impression with red rubber stamps than with clear stamps. For additional interest, I also used the...