CARD - Faux Foldy Flowers - mach 2!

Here is a faux foldy flower card using a flower from my new " soon to be released" Pointy Petals Pack. Like the name? LOL I am just working on some new foliage and I hope to have it ready for sale tonight or tomorrow :) There will be 7 different flower shapes in varying sizes.

The flower is quite high; I didn't glue the middle down ( which would have made it less puffy) and it is, I am guessing, over 1/2" sticking out.

I used an "orange" General's watercolour pencil to colour and blended with baby oil using tortillons. This time I coloured in a "tear drop" shape on each petal and blended the middle then blended out to the edges of the petal. I did a bit of outlining with my stardust pen.

It is such a bright happy orange... just like an orange creamsicle, if you have ever had one... yum! The brad is a Doodlebug Sugarcoated Brad I bought from the new scrapbooking store we have in our little town... I can walk to it... Happy Dance!!!! OK I will put a "plug" in ... Karen's Creations :) I don't know if she handles international customers; her website looks like it is in the middle of updating.

OK back to work I go.....

Pencil Blending Tutorial with homemade tortillons and baby oil PT 2

This is a continuation of this tutorial. I will be colouring Faux Foldy Flowers and showing you different techniques and ways of colouring them using the pencil blending technique with baby oil and homemade paper tortillons. I am going to assume now that you have your sharpened pencils, primed tortillon, sandpaper and image sitting in front of you ready to colour ;) I also forgot to tell you to scruff up the end of your new tortillon so that it will blend better ( you can still do this even if there is baby oil on it). If you are going to be colouring with multiple colour families, I'd advise making many tortillons and have 4-5 ready and primed with oil/OMS. Then you won't have to scuff the colour off the ends of the tortillons near as much.

EDIT: A primed tortillon - dip just the tip of your tortillon into the oil and blot several times with tissue or paper towel. The tortillon is ready when the marks you make by scribbling with your tortillon on scrap paper are dry. Yes, the tortillon is dry and pushes the pencil color like magic! No need for all this nonsense with gamsol/OMS/Zest-it type solvents- just apply the OMS and go. A wetter tortillon with OMS will give you great effects and will need less blending muscle.

Another tip, if your tortillon doesn't seem to be blending as well, rough it up on the sandpaper occasionally, do this before you think you might need more baby oil. Also lightly mould the roughed up tip back into shape with your fingers.



Here is a "no fail" technique and good to start off with. It will never do you wrong LOL! Just above, I have shown a purple flower ( prismacolor used - violet pc932). I have outlined the edges with a medium color line and I have kept the right petal unblended. Once you have outlined your whole flower, take your "clean" primed tortillon and make tiny circles around the line, working your way along the lines, trying to pull the colour into the white area of the petals. You will notice the tortillon feels scratchy when blending - get used to it ;) Then blend the same way on top of the area you have already blended out to soften the colour and bring the colour faintly into the white areas. A tip - if you are running out of colour; go back to the coloured line and grab a bit of colour from it and continue on with your blending. Notice the petal opposite the unblended one is one that shows the initial blending step. Blending might take some working and reworking, don't be afraid to "work it", you will win! :)


Here is a "no fail" leaf with a bit of an extra twist. Outline the leaf with a dark green ( Olive Green pc911) and then outline that colour with a medium or lighter green ( Chartreuse pc989 ). If the leaf had inked veins, outline those too. Fred's fast and dirty method - blend with a circular motion through the dark and through the light green working your way to the white areas of the leaf. Proper way, blend the light green first then go back blend the dark green out. Notice how crummy my colouring job was - oil/OMS blending is very forgiving LOL!



Here is another leaf technique. I used Olive Green, Chartreuse, and Cream (pc914). Cream is one of those colours I would NOT be without, I use it in almost every project. I usually use it in the "white areas" of a flower because it is just "warmer" then stark white... ok now I found the word, it adds "richness" just like real cream LOL. Work your way from light to dark, then you won't contaminate the light areas.



Here is another leaf showing the difference of adding a light yellow to the white areas before blending. It is much more pronounced in RL than in this scan. This helps add POP when your dark green doesn't have much yellow tones in its pigment. I used apple green (pc912) here and it does have a fair bit of yellow tone.


This flower is on the small side in RL. Notice how I shaded it on the unblended petal. Also after blending was done, I took a pale pink and "scrumbled" a bit of colour in the lighter purple areas ( you can also blend this out but not necessary). Scrumbling ( well for me in this example) is making tiny circles with very light pressure - see the pink "blob" to the right of the flower. Colours used - Violet pc932, Lilac pc956 and Pink pc929.



Here is another technique. Work your tortillon into the pink colour at the base of the petal and then work the tortillon back and forth in a straight line out to the top of the petal, you will get a blended streak/crease. Then continue on "circle blending" from the base and outlines to shade the flower. I am pretty sure I used Pink in this one ;)



Please click to enlarge - a must see up close :)

I don't know what to call this technique, Variegated perhaps? Colour like above ( I used Cream and Mulberry pc995). Blend the cream first to smooth it out. Work your tortillon into the base colour to get as much colour on to the tortillon as you can then do that straight back and forth blending like the pink flower in a straight line, keep adding "streaks" like in the middle flower; you can blend out the top of the streaks to soften. Go back and do circle blending at the base and work up a bit. Isn't that cool!? The smaller flower to the right is done similarly, but you are working down the petal.


Here are some more examples and "teasers"! Have a great day and I hope you enjoyed this tutorial :)



Colours - Carmine Red pc926 & Deco Yellow ( retired )


Colours - True Blue pc903, True Green pc910 & Canary Yellow pc916



Colours - Dark Brown pc946 & Yellow Ochre pc942

Pencil Blending Tutorial with homemade tortillons and baby oil PT 1

I thought I would show you some methods of pencil blending that I use, I have modified this technique so that it uses materials you should have around your house AND less toxic to your lungs LOL! Before I begin, I must admit, I have just spent this week trying out the baby oil ( instead of OMS) to see what the pros and cons were. A big thank you to AmzdByHsGrace and Darsie from the CoC board. Darsie wrote a tutorial on how she used baby oil and Derwent Inktense pencils ( on Fred's wishlist!) on watercolour paper. Well I have bucked the idea of using baby oil on cards as it can leech out of your paper and onto anything near it. BUT, if used sparingly, I think it should be okay for your projects ( please chime in if you agree or disagree :) ). Furthermore, there are a ton of awesome tutorials out there in web land to try. I posted a few links a few blog entries back. Here is another one from Sue Nelson to add to the list - I love her cards! ... and I can't use "love" too strongly here LOL

I will show you what "I do" with the flowers. This Part 1 will deal with your materials and getting you ready.

Pros of Baby Oil/Mineral Oil:
- it is cheap and readily available
- no toxic fumes! ... and smells baby fresh!
- a little goes a LONG way - I applied the oil once to my blending tortillon and I blended a whole sheet of flowers with it and it was still ticking! The oil doesn't evaporate, but it will dry eventually . OMS evaporates fairly quickly and you are usually reapplying it to your stump during a project.
- I got pretty smooth blending results - I think as good as OMS - WITH a paper tortillon. I did not try my regular blending stumps as I only have a few and didn't want to mess them up. I achieved SMOOTHER results with the paper tortillon and oil on copy paper than I did with my OMS and stump. I also got better results with the tortillon and OMS, go figure.
-they work on just about any pencil, waxy colored pencils, watercolour/watersoluble pencils, chalk/pastel pencils... I have tried them all and they work.
-baby oil did not bleed/smear the ink outlines from my printer.

CONS of Baby Oil:
- oil spots on your paper! If you use too much OMS it can make spots on your paper, but it will evaporate and disappear. Not so with oil. This is what I did. I dipped just the tip of the tortillon into the oil then blotted the tip with tissue, I used the tortillon on a scrap piece of paper and checked to see if oil leeched to the back of the paper or made a spot on the front. If not, I was good to go. If still too much oil, reblot with tissue/papertowel or draw with the tortillon on scrap until the marks are "dry".

EDIT: Carolivy gave me a good tip. If you have it, essential oils are good as a blending fluid. She uses Rosewood essential oil for dorsing in parchment craft and says it works great and doesn't leave oily spots. She also thinks Lavender oil would work as well. Oh can you imagine the wonderful smell while you craft.... :)

ON WITH TUTORIAL:

So you need materials:
-baby oil or mineral oil, ..... OMS/Gamsol/Zest-It, etc if you have it.

-tortillons ( stumps if you have them) I will show how to make them yourself!

-tissue or paper towel for blotting

-Sandpaper paddle, sanding block, piece of sand paper, or emery board - to sand off colour on tip of tortillon so you can use it for another colour.

-pencils - wax based Prismacolor is what I am using, watercolor/pastel pencils will work too. I prefer wax based, the colours are brighter, although I think those Inktense pencils would rock!

-a pencil sharpener! I almost forgot that one! LOL

-white CS/watercolor/regular paper, something matte not glossy

-image to colour - be it stamped or printed or hand drawn with a black pigment pen.

HOW TO MAKE A PAPER TORTILLON:

Find some regular weight paper, the more fuzzy/fibrous the better, eg recycled paper, copy paper, try different kinds, see what works best for you ;) ; you will also need some tape and a "pushing tool" (darning needle, skewer, chopstick, thick wire, etc.)
Cut a full sheet into thirds, no real science or measurement, roughly 3.5" by 6-8". The new cut sheets are then cut straight on a diagonal lengthwize starting about 1" from one side to 1" on the other. I used this tutorial ( great diagrams ) to make mine but did a few adjustments, I rolled the paper on the needle of a paperpricking tool or bamboo skewer ( something skinny and you can hold onto easily while rolling). Roll your paper pretty tight. When rolling, roll the flat side so that it is even and when done rolling use your push tool to push the roll out through the flat side until it comes to a sharp point. I used a bamboo skewer or a chopstick to push the paper roll out. Hold onto the tortillon and roll tape around it to secure. Here are some of mine.




I will post PT 2 soon. Here are some flowers I made. I haven't had time to turn them into cards yet. Yes, I am a tease! TaTa for now!

Another Faux Foldy Flower Card - Polka Dots

A birthday card for my niece I made last weekend. The flower was printed on copy paper, colored with a lovely Peacock Blue Prisma pencil and blended with OMS. I drew polka dots with a white glaze pen... I love this pen, it goes on "clear" and as it dries, it goes completely opaque and shiny! I used a paisley cuttlebug folder & dollar store ribbon and brad. If you'll notice, I folded the petals the other way this time.

I hope to have tutorials for colouring methods later this week or next; I have coloured a few flowers with a variegated technique that I will show soon. I am really "stuck" on these flowers LOL! They are quite addictive. I have 2 or 3 more flower shapes in the works. TODAY, I hope to get them completed. LOL.

Emma The Mermaid

Fred says, I'm in the middle of making designs, but I "slacked off" a bit and worked on this.

Emma (5 yrs) while colouring....
Mummy: Emma, what would you like to be when you grow up?
Emma: hmmm, a teacher, an artist.... or A MERMAID.

I love you Emma :)



shh, don't tell her ;) it is a Birthday Present!

Card - Vintage Ladies + Freebies

A card I made today. I used the Outlines Faux Foldy Flowers v1 in black and printed on really cheap copy paper, I mean cheap.... and the paper was onion thin :) The flower felt so neat... fluffy & crispy when completed. I thought I'd try out my new Prismacolor pencil sets, Black Raspberry on the flower.... it goes on this really dark brown and the OMS pulls out the lovely reds when blending. The small petals, I used Ginger Root, and I think the leaves are Kelly Green. I outlined and pinstriped with coloured Sakura stardust pens. The background paper was in these 50 packs of 6"X6" patterned paper from the dollar store, yes, for a dollar :)

The ladies were downloaded from art-e-zine.co.uk
There are pages and pages of vintage images to download :)) I won't tell you which page I found these lovely ladies, I thought I'd give you something to do ;) If you haven't been there before, DO check it out.

Well, girls I thought I would have more goodies to play with but the day hit a few snags. I hope to get designs I wanted done and "out the door" tommorow, or Monday at the latest.

In the meantime, here are some freebies from my dusty folders. They are tea bag folded Foldy Flowers I made once during playtime. They don't look like much on paper but when folded and put together, I really LOVE them! I have a few medallions made but not yet on cards, maybe I'll make a sample up to show later tonight.

Joanne Has Candy

Joanne has a wonderful little Sugar Nellie up for blog candy to celebrate 5000 hits(2600 visitors)! Go see! Please click on the post title above to go there.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day, to all the mom's out there in blogland! I had a lovely weekend, my mom came to visit ( and of course, my dad too) . We went to the nursery/bakeshop and bought flowers and the most delicious cinnamon knots, fresh out of the ovens. Then off we went to a wonderful antique store with herb gardens, free coffee and preserve sampling, llamas, goats, fluffy chickens and a nature trail... all in little log cabins... a little piece of heaven they have there. It's called "The Bruce Beckons".

The store has opened without a hitch ( so far LOL!). Thanks so much for your support and words of congratulations :) Also, thank you to all that purchased the Daffodil Kit, so far you have raised $48 for the Canadian Cancer Society. woohoo!



Here is a card I made today for my MIL, the lovely and oh so awesome DH cut out the flowers for me LOL! I coloured the sepia outline flowers with pink watercolour pencil and blended with a Dove Blender, added iridescent red lines on the petals. The leaves were painted light green and then completely painted over with green-yellow duo pearl ex... really cool, looks almost like dufex if you know what that is. The twirly bits are gold pearl ex using a liner brush.

I hope to have more products next week. I'd best get cracking!

Thanks again and BIG HUGS!!!!

YooHoo.... The Store is OPEN! :)

Well, it's DONE! You would not believe how relieved I am to finally get this thing running! I told myself, even if it is not done, you are opening TODAY ROFL. I do hope you will check it out.

I have just a few products up at the moment; I will be adding more next week. Purchases over $10 CAD will receive a 10% discount and purchases over $20 CAD.... 20%!!! These are digital downloads that you print on your own computer. Product download links are automatically sent to you once payment is received.

If anything else, please check out this Daffodil Cardfront Kit. The price is $2.50 CAD, however $1.50 CAD of your purchase will be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society during this month of May. More details in the product info at the store.



Here are some more previews of products currently available:

Arte y pico award

Valita nominated me for the Arte y pico award, actually a month ago :O I apologize for taking so long to blog this. Thank you so much Valita for the honour.

Here are the Rules
1. you pick 5 blogs that you think deserve this award for there creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogging comuminty, no matter the langage.
2. Each award has to have the name of the athor and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by ever one.
3. Award winner and the one who has given the prize has to show the link of arte y pico so everyone will know the origin of this award.
4. to show the rules


I have been fighting the anxiety of trying to pick members of the blogging community to nominate. There are too many extremely creative and talented people to count!!!!! Then there is "my issue" ( stress LOL) of obligating someone else to pick from the too many extremely creative and talented people out there. I am so sorry, I can't do it. LOL I nominate all the stamping and cardmaking folks out there in blog land. :)) THERE!

Thank you for your understanding :)

Faux Foldy Flower Tutorial

The difference between faux and "real" foldy flowers is the the real ones use a tea bag fold assembly. I noticed many were using the foldy flowers for 3D cutting, so I thought why not just make them for 3D anyway? More versatile and less paper :) If you are a die hard fan of the originals, let your voice be known and enough "squeaks" and I will make some more tea bag folding versions.

This is just one way to use them.... I have a friend ( our lovely LILY ) who has used them in parchment craft, printed the flowers on parchment vellum and then moulded the petals with her tools, I will show soon :))

Here is the card; I had a difficult time capturing the iridescent highlights so I have attached 2 versions.


The Flower:
I cut out the flowers from the light purple faux foldy flowers sheet. I went a bit overboard and lightly shaded the tips of the petals with a light pink coloured pencil and darkened the lower parts with a violet pencil, yes I blended the pencil with some OMS... but not necessary. The colours are a bit off, my camera and the fluorescent lighting did not like each other.


I took each flower and scored down the center of each petal, right through the center so a 6 petal flower takes 3 scores.... can also be scored with ruler and scoring tool.


Turn the flower white side up and pinch all the petals.


And viola...



Repeat for however many flower parts you want to use. I used 2 large flowers, 2 medium and 1 small for the purple "carnation".

Put some white tacky glue ( again doesn't matter what type of glue but you will want a really good hold and some "wiggle room" if the petals don't align right initially.) on the wrong side in center of the flower you are going to glue on top. Attach to center of lower flower staggered, you might have to use something pointy and press down on the flower center. Like so....


I then got out some iridescent paints ( Pearl Ex Jewels Watercolor Palette), using a liner or skinny waterbrush, I brushed the tips of purple petals with iridescent red ( a light lovely pink you can only see when the light hits it), iridescent gold on the little pink flowers, gold in all the flower centers, and green-yellow duo I used to line the veins and edges of the leaves. For the leaves, I also shaded the veins with a dark green colored pencil, I used the scor-pal to deboss the center and veins of the leaves then bent and moulded the leaves with my fingers, THEN I painted them with the pearl ex :). The flowers were primped and pinched to increase their "fluffiness".

I used a gate fold for this card and also used the scor-pal to emboss lines around the white diamond backing CS. The purple paper can be found in the Freebie I posted HERE.

The photos of the card just do not do it justice. Anna Griffin... eat your heart out :)

Another thing... these flowers were printed on matte card/coverstock and the flowers are quite stiff and will most likey be hard to mail unless they are put in some padding or a box type envelope a la Maria? You could use regular inkjet/copy paper but they might flatten out if mailed.

Limited Time Freebie

Well the votes for the very "short" poll are in! Sorry folks, next time I have a poll, I will keep it open a little longer. I just had to squeeze this freebie in on a FRIDAY LOL! I WAS going to go with Monday Freebies but I realized I am too grumpy on Mondays to cheer people on with a freebie on Mondays LOL! Boy that was a mouthful :O

Anyhoo, by a very close margin, PURPLE has ruled.... and so it should as it is such a fabulous colour if I do say so myself :)

The FREEBIE I am posting is a half sheet of Light Purple Faux Foldy Flowers and Simple lightly painted leaves that are quite versatile. The download is HERE ( EDIT: Sorry No Longer Available ) and will only be available until next FRIDAY May 9th. So grab it while you can. And please play nice and don't share... send your friends here to grab, but you must be quick about it ;)

The first edition of Faux Foldy Flowers plus a few extra goodies ( all things willing) should be available in my new shop next week. I will keep things small and simple until I figure out all is working as it should be. I will announce the opening of the store soon.

Sorry no little picture preview, you will have to download and see!

Another Card

Another card. The background is one I played with in PSP, I cropped and colored a vintage clipart medallion so that the center was off to the side and could frame a flower or a tea bag medallion. I thought it look kind of neat :) I have made 8 shades ( 4 to a page ) they are the size you see here, a bit smaller than a US A2 (1/4 fold ) card. I brushed and tipped crimped leaves and the petals with iridescent gold twinkling H2O's.

I will add the background papers HERE as a freebie. I will keep this one up for the time being. Another freebie coming!

Faux Foldy Flower Card

A card I made with Faux Foldy Flowers ;) The flower sheet for printing is a half a letter sheet size and has enough flowers (6) and leaves ( actually 8) to make this card. The leaves were trimmed with decorative scissors and I used the scor-pal to score the center of leaf ( also for the flower petals) and an embossing tool on my mouse pad for the "veins". I punched the small flowers and embossed the petals and added stardust pen lines to add some glitter plus blue glaze pen for centers. Thanks also to my new Cuttlebug, Swiss Dots and the stamp diecut that came with it LOL! The "with love" is an All Night Media Ken Brown Calligraphy stamp I have had "forever".

The size of the flowers here are 2", 1.5" and 1". I added blue stickles to centers. I used matte Wausau "bright white" card stock to print the flower sheet ( really cheap from Walmart in a 100 pack ).

Freebies are coming later today. They will be time limited so please don't delay downloading them ;)