The Art of Fall

October 05, 2016 0 Comments

Happy Wednesday Dare 2B Artzy fans! Hope you’re having a great day. I’m so excited because it’s finally starting to feel like fall in Colorado. Today the temp was in the upper 60’s with low 40’s tonight. I think they even have a frost warning out tonight.  I know I’m weird, but that makes me happy. We’ve already had measurable snowfall in our mountains the past couple of weeks. Won’t be long now – it usually snows in Denver before my birthday and that’s a little over 15 days away, so we’ll see.

This week I’m getting in on the fun for this month’s challenge: Fall! 

I’ve put together two super quick cards that really allow you to get your hands inky literally.  I started off by cutting a piece of Canson watercolor paper to about an A2 size card which is 4 ¼ x 5 ½. Next, I rifled through my dye inks and pulled out my favorite fall colors and set them aside.

One at a time, I placed the Dare 2B Artzy Tangle Leaves stamps on my MISTI positioning them so that they would be centered on my cardstock. The MISTI also insures a clean stamped image and it would also allow for adding more ink if needed since I was stamping on watercolor paper

I stamped each leaf using my Versamark – stamping a couple of times and then sprinkled with some Lindy’s Stamp Gang embossing powder in Midnight Copper. It’s a really pretty rich, espresso brown color that has a metallic look to it. I just love it!

Once each image was stamped and heat embossed, I set them aside and cleared some space on my craft mat.

I’d seen the very talented Jennifer McGuire use this technique recently, but she used similar colors which you don’t have to worry about colors blending together when they’re all similar shades of the same color. I wanted my leaves to appear more fall like so I chose to use multiple colors using the same technique. Initially I selected 4 colors and then decided they didn’t mix well together as some colors tend to turn muddy when mixed together so I settled on 3 colors instead. I smooshed (love that word) my inks directly onto my Ranger craft mat. I chose green, orange and purple colors for my first card. When I added my inks directly to my mat, I made sure that the colors were separated from each other. 

Next, I used some Sheer Shimmer Spray from Tsukineko (say that 3 times fast, lol!). I’d had these sprays lurking around in my craft stash forever. I’d picked them up on clearance at Joann’s for $. 99 for the two travel sized bottles. One was gold and the other was silver. They are very similar to Rangers Perfect Pearls mists or even just making your own shimmer mists with Perfect Pearls powder and water.

I shook up the gold spray really well and sprayed it directly onto the inks I’d smooshed onto my craft mat. I was pretty generous with the spray giving each color of ink 2-3 sprays of the shimmer.

Here comes the fun part. I took my fingers to the lightest color and mixed the color and shimmer spray together. It was pretty cool to see the gold shimmer mixing with the ink color on my craft mat.

If you remember the days of finger painting in elementary school, this next part is a breeze. Starting with the lightest color, I took my fingers and dipped into my now shimmery ink and began blotting it directly on top of my heat embossed image.  Dabbing and blotting and adding more ink when needed. Obviously the more sprays of shimmer spray to ink the wetter your image will look and the closer it will resemble watercolor as more water will make the colors move across your paper more.

For my maple leaf, I didn’t add as much water as I was trying to control it more and have a deeper saturation of color.

I will say that I tried several different colors for the maple leaf and each time I got a bit of a different result. You really just have to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t. I probably made 4 different leaf images just experimenting with the different colors and even different embossing powders to see what I liked best. It’s always fun to play though.

When I was happy with my initial colors that I’d blotted on, I used my heat tool and dried the ink on my paper. At this point, I could have gone in and added a bit more colors in some places, but I chose to stop.

The coolest thing is that when the ink is dried you can really see the gold mixed in with the color. It’s such a great effect.

The second card was just as fun, but I didn’t have to get my fingers all inky. Once again, I smooshed my ink colors to my mat and sprayed them with the gold shimmer spray again. This time I chose purple, orange and yellow colors of dye ink.

 I took my other piece of embossed water color paper with the oak leaf and simply laid it face down in the ink/shimmer spray that was pooled on my craft mat. I pressed it to the mat several times to pick up the ink in different areas and sort of mix the colors together.  It creates this awesome watercolor effect and while the water was pooled a bit on my paper I was able to move the paper to direct the ink.

I love the look that this gave my card panel. It kind of reminded me of Easter egg dye.

When both panels were completely dry, I stamped the sentiment from the Tangle Leaves set and heat embossed it with the same Midnight Copper embossing powder.

Each panel was then added to a layer of colored cardstock and adhered to the card base.

These cards were so simple and fun to make. They’re pretty quick as well so it’s easy to make multiples. I even grabbed another piece of water color paper and mopped up the rest of the color/shimmer spray and now I have a nice abstract water color background for another card. I wasn’t about to waste all that shimmery color, lol!

Thanks for stopping by. Make sure you check out all of the awesome new stamps and dies in the Dare 2B Artzy store. It’s a great time to start planning those holiday cards!

Hope you have a crafty day – go get your hand’s inky and celebrate fall!

Hugs

Tonya

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