Is It Halloween Yet?

August 21, 20191 Comment

Welcome everyone! I have some exciting news to share! I’m so thrilled to be joining the Picket Fence Studios Design Team! I’m a huge fan of their Life Changing Blender Brushes and gosh, their stamps, dies and stencils are amazing!

CARD DETAILS

I’m kicking off today creating a spooky Halloween scene. Halloween is my favorite holiday and I totally fell in love with the Wicked Together Stamp set.

I started by adhering the center of the 3 1/2″ Blending Stencil to my Bristol Smooth card stock with Pixie Spray from Thermoweb. Then I ink blended, Peacock Feathers, Pine Needles and Chipped Sapphire Distress Oxide inks with the Life Changing Blender Brushes.

I removed the center stencil and temporarily adhered the other part of the stencil, where it covers the background, so I can ink the middle. I blended Scattered Straw and Mustard Seed Distress Oxide ink in that center area to create my moon.

To finish off my scene, I masked off the entire background with the Layers of Grass Stencil and ink blended the grass using Picket Fence Studios Black Hybrid Ink Pad. This was actually difficult to blend on top of the Distress Oxide, so I applied my ink pad directly over the area I wanted to stencil and dragged the ink pad across. This gave me a gorgeous deep black.

I love all the silhouette images on the Wicked Together stamp set but this cat on the broomstick stole my heart. I stamped the cat, the sentiment and a few bats using Versafine Clair Nocturne Ink using my Misti Stamping Tool.

I hope you enjoyed my first project with Picket Fence Studios and can’t wait to create more!

SUPPLIES

Affiliate links are used at no additional cost to you. By purchasing through the links listed below, I receive a small commission of the sale.

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Watercoloring Using Arteza Watercolors

August 20, 20192 Comments

Welcome back everyone! Yesterday I shared how I swatched out my Arteza 36 Half-Pan Premium Watercolors and today I’m using them in a project.

VIDEO DETAILS

I have a video that you can view down below or HERE on my Youtube channel.

CARD DETAILS

Watercoloring can be very intimidating but I have found if you heat emboss your images first, it’s a lot less scary. I’m using Bee Paper and stamping my images using Gina K Designs Embossing Ink. Then I’ll add Hero Arts Gold Glitter Embossing Powder and heat set.

What makes this a little easier is that the heat embossed lines create barriers which makes it a little easier to contain the water and the colors.

I start out by working in sections. I wet the area I’m going to color, pick up a little ink from my watercolor set and lightly drop in the color in the bottom part of that section. After quickly dipping my brush in clean water, I will start to pull that color out towards to edges. The goal is to make it lighter towards the outside edges of the petals.

I apply the same technique throughout all of the heat embossed images. Working in sections makes this a lot more manageable too.

After my images are completely colored and dry, I use the coordinating die set to die cut the images out.

To create a subtle background, I will flick on some Gold Metallic ink that I watered down and also some of the same paint color that I used in the flowers. This pulls all the colors together nicely.

I will lay out my images onto a piece of Ivory card stock and attach my smaller flowers using Lawn Fawn Liquid Glue and the large image with Gina K Design foams squares.

The sentiment, also from the Grateful Heart stamp set, is heat embossed in Gold Embossing Powder onto Pitch Black card stock and attached with foam squares as well.

I hope you enjoyed today’s inspiration.

All of the supplies are listed down below. Affiliate links are used when possible at no additional cost to you.

SUPPLIES

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Swatching: Stop Over-Thinking It

August 19, 2019August 19, 20191 Comment

Welcome back everyone! This video has been a long time coming. Arteza sent me some watercolors a couple of months ago to try out and put in a video and I’m just now getting to it. I’ll tell you why in just a second.

VIDEO DETAILS

I have a video that you can view down below or HERE on my Youtube channel. I’m swatching out the colors and doing a little “shop” talk about how I feel about watercoloring.

DETAILS

The first thing I’m going to tell you is …. STOP OVER-THINKING IT! Yep, I capitalized that. I’m just as guilty of it and I pushed passed it.

Part of why this video took so long (other then being super busy!) was because I was so intimidated by watercoloring. Yes, I’ve used watercolors in the past and have even done some videos but I was so scared to do this swatching video.

I’ll be brutally honest. I don’t know a lot about watercoloring. Not in the technical terms. I have a hard time sharing things without knowing a reason behind the madness. It was a barrier. No more barriers! Grab those paints, some paper and water and let’s do this!

A couple things I do know about watercoloring is paper can make a difference. Unfortunately, I do not own a lot of watercolor paper. Today, I’m using Canson Watercolor paper which you can find almost anywhere for a reasonable price. It’s not the most high quality but it gets the swatching job done.

Since I really don’t know what all the numbers/values mean, I’m approaching this with what will be helpful for me. The first thing I wanted to do was put this in rainbow order because the original packaging was not, as you will see in the video. This helps me so I’m not hunting for the reds in 3 different places.

The swatch grid is something I created on my own with a ruler and a pencil. Waffle Flower carries some great tools to help swatch, which I do not own at this time.

What I did notice while swatching is these paints are very smooth to me. I do not have a ton of experience with all the watercolors out there but these made me happy.

Once my swatching sheet is complete, I can put it in the lid of my watercolor pan and it will always be there for reference.

Arteza has graciously provided my viewers/readers with a discount. You can receive 10% off your purchase through the Arteza website by using the code MindyEggenDesign1 at checkout . This discount is only valid until September 25, 2019. Please note, this is an affiliate link that when you purchase through my link, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.

If you are like me and just starting out with watercoloring, I do think this is a good set. You have a variety of colors to work with and they are easy to pop into a bag and take with you in your travels.

SUPPLIES

I have both U.S. and European links provided for your shopping convenience.

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Spellbinders Holiday 2019 Blog Hop

August 19, 2019August 19, 201948 Comments

Welcome everyone ! I’m so excited to a part of the Spellbinders Holiday 2019 Release Blog Hop!

If you arrived here from Svitlana Shayevich you are in the right place! You can always start at the beginning over on the Spellbinders blog.

First, let’s talk about prizes

GIVEAWAY

To celebrate this release, Spellbinders is giving away a $50 gift certificate to one lucky blog reader – selected from the comments across all the blogs in the hop. Giveaway closes on Sunday, August 25 11:59 pm EDT. The winner will be announced in the blog post the following Monday. The winner is responsible for shipping costs, duties and taxes.

CARD DETAILS

For my card, I’m featuring the Santa’s Workshop die. This creates such an amazing snow globe that you can decorate the inside of. I focused on creating a snowy scene with the trees and deer.

I used red glitter card stock for the base of my snow globe. For the inside of my globe, I die cut Powder Blue card stock and ink blended Ultramarine and Azurite inks around the edges.

I adhered my snow globe to a piece of patter paper from the Really Rainbow Winter pack.

Next, I attached my front panel to a piece of Blue Denim card stock using craft foam for dimension

There are so many amazing Holiday dies available at very affordable prices.

You’re next stop on the hop is Marie Heiderscheit

Here is a list of the entire hop in case you get lost along the way.

SUPPLIES

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Mega Greetings 2 – Altenew

August 18, 2019August 18, 2019Leave a comment

Welcome everyone! I have some projects to share today using the Mega Greetings 2 set from Altenew. You can pick up this set from Altenew at an amazing discounted price! This is such a good deal – don’t miss it!