Hey, hi friends! I’m up on The Greetery’s blog today with today’s TGIF (The Greetery Inspiration Friday) post, and I have a wintery thank you card to share that I made using the recently released Winter Sketches stamp set.
I wanted to incorporate some watercolor into my project, so I started the way I often do, by stamping an image, painting it and dragging some of the color out to the outside of the image, but this time I used stamping inks that are very reactive to water and the color flowed WAY too much, muting the crisp lines of the stamped images. What to do Sue?
So I did it all in reverse. Using the first attempt as a color placement guide, I laid down a blend of blue, green and brown paint, with lots of water, and let them do their thing. Once it was good and dry, I stamped the images using a mix of blue and green inks for the pine bough and kraft and dark grey ink for the gnarly branch, chosing ink colors that are close to the paint colors I used.
I used more of the paint from the background to lightly fill in the “pods” on the pine branch, and a little brown paint to fill in the gaps in the rough branch where the other stamp layers would usually cover. Then I splattered the card panel with blue paint splatters and some thinned white gouache paint.
I stamped a greeting from the Sentiment Suite Thank You stamp set, with Versamark ink and heat embossed with platinum embossing powder. (Platinum embossing powder continues to be my automatic reach-for, neither gold nor silver, but a perfectly beautiful in between hue.)
Finally, I added a strip of coordinating patterned paper from my Never Lets Me Down Scrap Stash, and wrapped some brown jute and metallic platinum cord around the card panel, tying a knot instead of a bow to allow the focus to stay on the stamped and painted image above.
Thank you so much for stopping by today. I hope you’ve had a happy and relaxing holiday week and that you’re able to take some time to get creative!
