Yesterday I did some embossing with a friend and, as I was introducing her to brusho paints, I remembered how much I like the emboss resist technique with brushos. I don’t do too much heat embossing these days because of the gritty mess of embossing powder that ends up on my desk even when I am careful. But the results with brusho… I embossed the Darkroom Door ‘daisy delight’ stamp on hot pressed watercolour paper with sterling embossing powder. I spritzed the panel with water then sprinkled orange and crimson brusho powders over the top. The trapped colour is just what I hoped for. I added ..read more

Last week I shared a leaf and lavender gel print video; in today’s video I have added some gold dots through the totally dotty stencil for some shimmer and extra interest. In the video you will see the gel printing process. I turned the printed panel into five cards and I have listed the added stamps or dies below each card photo. I have an in-person botanical gel printing class coming up on Saturday July 27th and there are a couple of spaces left if you’re interested. I added a die-cut sentiment in dark green to the panel above using the Spellbinders ‘simply perfect mix & match’ sentime ..read more

Yes, the stencil used for this card is called ‘Totally Dotty’! I mean what else would you call it? It is a large stencil from AALL & Create sent to me by the Foiled Fox so I could do totally dotty things with it. I blended inks through it for this card but I have also blended paint through it on gel prints and will no doubt use it with alcohol inks and art journals as well. I blended wild honey, picked raspberry, salty ocean and evergreen bough distress inks through the stencil with blending brushes then, when I lifted it, blended more ink to soften the stark white background. This is a ..read more

An amazing thing happened with this card. It arrived on the birthday, after being sent from Canada to Australia by an unreliable sender(me)! So now the recipient has it I am posting it here on the blog. I have shared cards made with this technique before; it’s a fun one. I used alcohol inks on Grafix white craft plastic and for both cards I only used two inks along with isopropyl alcohol. I start with a layer of isopropyl alcohol on the panel, then add a couple of alcohol inks and tilt the panel to move the inks and cover the whole panel. Next I drop a stencil on top, for both these cards I ..read more

There are some lovely new summer digital images in the Echidna Studios etsy store. My daughter has been busy turning her own photos into line art for printing and colouring. I chose coloured pencils for the Vintage Patio set and added Tori’s Trees to the background. I have fun creating scenes with digital images. Even though the Vintage Patio set includes a table and two chairs I used only one chair on my card and added trees from a different digital set. Adding the ‘thinking of you‘ sentiment gave the card the card a bit of a ‘miss you’ vibe. I always like the look of coloured pencils on kra ..read more

I have cornflowers growing in my garden but they are still quite small seedlings so no signs of flowers at this stage. I am hoping they will bloom some time this summer. Meanwhile I’ve been stamping some, in blue of course. I had blue cornflowers in my wedding bouquet and flower crown so they are quite special to me. I’ve teamed up with the Foiled Fox to bring you this post and it is wonderful to be collaborating with them again. The stamps featured on today’s cards are from AALL & Create; the set is called ‘Cornflower‘ and includes two flower stamps and two sentiments. I’ve stamped the ..read more

Although I made this page a month or so back; it is an appropriate theme for right now. We are in the ‘garden days’. My back garden is looking colourful and I love wandering out there each day to see what is growing, blooming or falling over! This page began as a collage of book page pieces. I didn’t have a plan but wanted a base. I used pages from an old novel, an old atlas, sewing instructions, sheet music and other scraps to cover the double page spread in my 7″x7″ handmade journal. Months passed before I came back to do more. Before adding colour I painted some off white paint over the ..read more

Same concept, different colour palette. I’ve been sharing my collaged gel print cards over recent weeks featuring a lot of blue prints. You know I love blue but it isn’t the only colour I print with. Although I have gel-printed with feathers, the ones featured here were all stamped. You can add interest to your prints with stamping or stenciling or other techniques; you don’t have to leave them just the way they pulled off the plate. For this bird themed card I chose yellow, orange and greenish prints then stamped feathers on them before cutting them into squares. To make the squares I somet ..read more

If this design looks familiar it’s because I posted a couple of similar cards a few weeks back. They featured the same pretty Lavinia stencil, ‘leaf trails’. The difference between the cards is partly the colours but more significantly today’s cards feature splatter! You know how I feel about splatter. I always say if a project doesn’t seem quite finished, add some splatter. The panels on these cards were made with alcohol inks on a gel plate. I dropped three or four alcohol inks on the plate along with some isopropyl alcohol to help the inks move and blend. I dropped the leaf trails stenci ..read more

Recently I posted several ’tiled’ collage cards on the blog and mentioned there would be more to come. Today’s cards once again feature gel printed panels arranged and decorated in two ways. I used three different gel prints to ’tile’ the card above, a plain blue print, a print created with a zig-zag stencil and a print made with the an impression from an embossing folder. To tie together the dark blue, light blue and yellow + blue prints I added a navy wildflower (Tim Holtz) and navy ink splatter. To create the square birthday card below I used ’tiles’ from the same print but rearranged th ..read more