A magic song

I was running late for another entry for Designs by Ryn for the March challenge, so I decided to post this for the April challenge instead. And what a coincidence: the main stamp I used is on sale now! And one that I don’t have is on sale as well, so I think I’m going to order that one as a birthday present (ok my birthday has allready passed, and I got myself plenty of hobby-gifts, but hey, one more stamp…or a stamp and stencil…or two…)

How I made this card

Start by gathering pink/lila coloured paints. I don’t really like pink, but I think in a moment of sanity loss I had ordered some pink paint. So I decided to make a very pink card.
Also, I had bought the Winter sheet, to which I’ll refer to as the Celtic sheet from now on – it removes some mental limits to its use. Pink isn’t really a winter colour, so perfect for this stampset (to show that it’s also nice on non-winter cards).

Pour drops of it onto glossy or very smooth A6 cardstock, and press another piece of cardstock on top of it. Wiggle it around a bit, pull apart, turn one cardstock, put togehter again, pull apart, etc. Divide the paint with the papers so the entire surface (or almost all of it) is covered.

Then, spray with glimmer mist (or water, but a tutorial I once saw they used the glimmer mist because of a special reason I forgot). I had also used perlescent paint by the way.

After wetting it, wrap it in kitchenfoil. Wrinkle it and let dry.

Meanwhile, clean your dining table on which you sprayed perfect pearls mist because you managed to leave only 2 small A6 sized spots open to craft on on the edge of your craftsheet.

Ofcourse I have not taken a picture of the results at this point. Wouldn’t want you to spoil the surprise for you, just try for yourself!

I did this technique also with some other colours for another challenge, these are the results near the end. 4 cards, 2 backgrounds, (actually the right paper is where I put on the remaining paint, as I hate to throw away those leftovers.) The paper on top are the colours for the Chocolate Baroque colour challenge.

 

On the next picture you can see the foil effect very well.

HEre too, and here you can see how shiny it is. It is very shiny. A bit too much, so I covered it with stamps and ink. (Ofcourse I wanted to try out the new celtic stamps too.) Colouring the celtic symbols was tricky – I can’t paint inside the thin lines and making everything white is a bit boring. To bring out the figures more I added the blue.

I chose for white embossing this time, as it fit the celtic symbols. Gave the fairy a bronze colour and blue hair, blue and red dress and green/brown leaves/feathers. Some bronze/brown in the wings and harp, and accented the eyes.

 

I like the shiny bit above her head, like the harp produces magic.

Before matting it onto a white card I lightened up the edges a bit with some lila colour.

It could be a winter card still. Or it could just be a mystic summer card. Hope you like it!

Arcane Dreams

Thinking of a title for this card, I thought it was dreamlike, hypnotized, trance, drugs… What’s with me and drugs lately? I never used it and don’t want to start now. Lack of sleep is good enough to make you feel dizzy :P.

Anyway, trance, hypnotic, that sort of fits. Arcane. Arcane! That’s it, why didn’t I think of that sooner.

So humpadabum, here she is, our Arcane musician, wielding her harp to cast her dreamspell on you.

Fairy is from Designs By Ryn, the word Dreams is from Christina Renee clearstamp set (not sold anymore), the sun is from Stampinback (IIRC), the burst is from Chocolate Baroque. The chipboard things on it are remains of the Albert Heyns promotional goods. Albert Heyn, or AH, is a big supermarket chain which regularly has cardboard/paper things to collect for kids. this time the theme is “a farmers life”. Used in this card is 1 egg and some left overs. 1 egg? yup. Slide the two most eggshaped figures into eachogher and you have a 3d egg out of paper. (top view of the egg is a + ). I hope I didn’t ruin your thoughts about this card now, that you see eggs everytime you look at it. I think I jinxed that now, having said that…

So I glued some bits and pieces onto a card, added distress paint ranomly, a Design by Ryn fish scale stamp (forgot to mention that) and some more paint.

I stamped the fairy, coloured her, then stamped her again onto tissue paper, coloured her again and decoupaged her onto the first image.

 

edit: inserted the next mage.

I changed the colours of her dress on the second stamp, but kept the colours of her wings largely the same so it would be more intense. Above photo: no sparkles on her wings.

Next I stamped the Dreams text in cherry pink stazon. I thought it would match. I have no pictures of that for a reason. The pink just screamed out at me, like a Paris Hilton pink barbie something.

So I stamped over it twice, I inked up the stamp mostly with gothic purple (left some uninked at the top) and next again in black, inking mostly only the bottom part. I added some sparkles on the wings, and drops, made a frame to mat it on and assembled it all.

Another tip: I never use a whole sheet of paper to mat my card on, as postage is 1 stamp for 0-20g, above it’s 2 stamps. And 20g is easily to get to with self made cards and envelopes. Also, I save the cut out bits to use for other cards.

Next up is Alien Art, a card made similar to this one.

Arcane Dreams is my third entry to Designs by Ryn October Customer Creation Challenge. (always anything goes, but must use Design by Ryn’s stamps).

Making of a Whispered Autumn Song

Some pictures I forgot to add. I had some trouble determining what or whom the fairy was singing too.

Decisions decisions…

Here is the card as it was then. I cut off the left side later, to balance the card more. I had wanted to make some more shade there, but it was distracting. Around the fairy are some stamps that might fit in there. Maybe the unicorns, coming in from the left of the card? All grey stamps are Chocolate Baroque, the red rubber is from Designs by Ryn, the white ones are from the set Pixie Glade by ?? (I’ve got them for quite a while). The pinkish stamp (high heels) is VivaLasVegas, as is the stamped, coloured and cut out gnome. The roughly stamped butterfly and castle are Chocolate Baroque too, as is the stamped, coloured and cut out mushroom barely seen on the left.

I stamped several images roughly and cut them out, to see how it looked.

This one looked like the sitting fairy is said, and the fairy behind her is watching her reaction while the big fairy sings.

This is the mushroom that was a left over from a failed card, and which I had wanted to use in the Psychedelic Party card but which was too big. It could be nice here, with the bird sitting on top of it.

Or would she be singing to a butterfly about the passing of days, the end of summer?

 

This one was a favourite of mine for a long time – like the gnome had been bad and got a speech. Or maybe the opposite, he was quite heroic and was praised? The gnome was stamped and cut for another card but I didn’t use it for that card. It’s a Viva las VegaStamp, and tiny, but cute.

His height didn’t match her LOS, so what if I raised him onto a mushoom? Gnomes do go well with mushrooms.

Or maybe she’s singing to a little elf castle, hoping to sing the elfs out? And that cheeky gnome just standing there, ready to do something naughty?

I think now I had too much mushroom tea and got a bit silly. What if she was having lunch with a cup of tea, and used the mushroom as a table?

Or this one, where the fairy is leaning toward her to listen. (Gnome is still hanging around.) I liked this one best, but I wanted some colour on the fairy.

Yup that is my table, and the workspace remaining in the end. I coloured some paper with the ranger airbrushtool and distress markers, then stamped and clearembossed the fairy and cut her out.

 

Here us the result. That note on the left, with “Fever” on it – I was trying some words for the Psychedelic party, and tried “disco fever”.

  And a closeup of the result. (and behind her you can see a big tip of mine: on all sides of your inkpad, glue down a strip, coloured with that ink and write the name on it. I started doing that on only 1 side, but then you have to stack the boxes neatly each time. So then I did 2 sides. But still too much searching. So now it’s 4 sides, just white paper and plain tape – if I would just glue down the paper it would be smudged in no time I bet, so cover it with something ink-resistant.)

(Don’t take any advice from me about cutting your stamps, as I sometimes cut the stamps first and then put them on the mounting foam, then cut them out. It doesn’t always match well, and if I stamp edges, then I cut those away after. I realize now that I should probably do it the other way around, and remove more from the cushion then from the stamp. Or would the stamp bend to the paper then?

If you remember the card, you might think: huh, but there was a fairy and a flower on it, not another fairy!

That’s right. I found the colours didn’t match, and the coloured silhouette didn’t work with the stamped and non-silhouette big fairy.

So I searched for a right sized image of something that would fit, and found this flower from Chocolate Baroque.

The flower is stamped directly on the card, anything glued on would not match with this scene, it would take away the focus of the fairy too much. There’s red glitter on the flower, the harp is shimmering gold, as is the “fur” on her wings.

A picture says more then 1000 words they say, so let me just take a picture of it now.

And now you can also see how the fairy doesn’t fit:

It’s not just her glossyness, the colours were not for this card.

 

I stored her in a box with more pretty cards / backgrounds, and put her on top of some sheets I had made with bister. She fits on those better!

Not a great picture, the detail is missing from the backgrounds, but the colours sure are great 🙂 Now I just need to make some cards out of them.