VideoTutorial: Altered Weekly Planner Cover

Hello to everyone, Giovanna here, and today my story and my artwork is all about friendship and cats.
When I moved to Milan, last year, I met a wonderful person, that later she became a true friend, that opened her house to me for a couple of weeks. She has also two wonderful furry friends, a large ginger cat and a sweet mackerel cat. At the beginning of 2017 I was again struggling with personal issues, and she came to rescue me, again. Now that I leaving Milan to come back home, I made a little gift for her, featuring, obviously, cats. Ok, we are a couple of crazy cat ladies, no way.
She daily use a weekly planner on her desk with a plastic cover, so I redo it a little bit. Hope she likes it!

Here's the video tutorial, you can apply this technique to any no-porous surface, like plastic or metal or glass.

Let me introduce you those little fellows, Leo and Pippa (Birba for friends):

And yes, he is so darn big!

Materials I used:

A Gift from the Netherlands

It is Cec here and I have a very simple card to show you today that comes with a special story.

I noticed on the news a little while ago that tulip growers in the Netherlands had cultivated a special tulip in honour of Canada's Sesquicentennial (150 years) this year.  Since I am Canadian and live near Toronto this news caught my interest.  Here is a photo of the tulip:

You might wonder why they would do this for Canada.  Well Canada and the Netherlands have a special relationship resulting from actions during World War II when Canadian forces led the liberation of the Netherlands and hosted the Dutch Royal Family in exile.

Following German Occupation of the Netherlands, the Dutch royal family took refuge in Canada. Princess Margriet was born in exile while her family lived in Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada. The maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital in which Princess Margriet was born was temporarily declared to be extraterritorial by the Canadian government, thereby allowing her citizenship to be solely influenced by her mother's Dutch citizenship. To commemorate the birth, the Canadian Parliament flew the Dutch flag over Peace Tower. This is the only time a foreign flag has flown over the Canadian Parliament Building.

I have the Tulip stamp from the Nottingham Lace set and thought that I would see if I could paint it to resemble this special tulip and make it into a simple card.

Here is how I made this card:

I stamped the tulip on watercolour card with some Archival Ink (I used Wendy Vecchi's Watering Can).

Next I added some water to the English Cottage Paints and using a fine brush painted the tulip.  The head of the tulip was painted from the bottom up with Lemon Meringue and Postbox Red, blending between the two colours.  The stem and leaves were painted with a mixture of Lime Marmalade and Hunter Green.  I painted the rest of the tulip with Gee-Sso White Gesso because I wanted a really bright white.

When the watercolour card dried I noticed a bit of rippling so I used some Super Thick Slap it On to mount the tulip panel on a thick piece of card cut just slightly smaller.  This smoothed it out and gave the tulip panel a bit of dimension.  The panel was then adhered to a piece of red card stock and then added to the card blank.

I created the sentiment on the computer and mounted it on some red card stock before adding it to the card.  You could also stamp the sentiment if you have something in your stash that would work for the occasion.

Happy Birthday Canada and thank you to the Netherlands for the pretty gift!

Discover New Oceans

Hello Everyone and Welcome!

Today Ksenija is here, and I am happy to share with you a new project as a part of March inspiration from International DT.

I am featuring Under the Sea stamp set in combination with Megaflakes.

I started with stamping the bubbles in black archival ink down to a white card stock base.

Then I coloured the impressions with watercolour markers.

The next step was to create a panel with a focal element. I cut a panel by 2 cm smaller than the size of the standard card. Stamped down the sentiment from the same set in black ink and then a seashell in soft grey ink. I applied FlitterGlu to the upper edge of the shell and stamped it down repeatedly. Winter Dawn Megaflakes look gorgeously in combination with soft grey inks.

To assemble my card I adhered the panel to the card base using a piece of foam for additional dimension.

Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope, you enjoy this card and you will play with IndigoBlu stamps and Megaflakes this week.

IndigoBlu Supplies Used:
Under the Sea Stamp Set
FlitterGlu
Winter Dawn Megaflakes

Hot Air Balloon

Hello everyone! It's Solange Marques here!
This month at IndigoBlu its all about stories.
My story is about a hot air balloon. I like to think of balloons as the imagination, It can fly high, over seas, fields or mountains and see the world from above. Then they come back and land on the ground back to a reality.
I like to imagine myself  flying in one of these balloons and feel the wind take me through the blue sky through endless landscapes.

I've used IndigoBlu Damaged Dots Mixed Media Paper Pad.
I've applied embossing powder on Grand Tour III stamp:

On the top of the balloon I've used IndigoBlu Floral Fantasy stamp.

I've also used IndigoBlu Vintage Flourish A6:

And finally, IndigoBlu Steampunkesque:

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you enjoy it!

Inspiration from International Design Team Members Solange, Ksenija and Cec

More inspiration from Internation Design Team Members Solange, Ksenija and Cec can be found over on their blogs.

Solange

Ksenija

Cec

Inspiration from International Design Team Members KayM, Emilia, Autumn and Cheremane

More inspiration from KayM, Emilia, Autumn and Cheremane. Head over to their blogs for the full tutorial.

Kay M

 

Autumn

Emmy

Cheremane

Inspiration from International Design Team Members Jannet and Giovanna.

A little more inspiration for you from Jannet and Giovanna. For the full tutorial head over to their blogs.

Jannet

Giovanna

20,000 Leagues

Hello and welcome,    Kay M here today with a 20cm x20cm canvas with my take on this month's theme of story telling.  The story is not personal but the classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.  

The Nautilus came to mind  after I finished Steampunk inspired mini panel so it was incorporated into canvas using two of my favourite stamp sets- Steampunkesque and Under the Sea.  

For the canvas background fine textured paste was applied through the Laural Leaves stencil over the lower half, when dry the whole canvas was painted with Gee-Sso-Good white.  A wash of Stroke of Midnight, Kingfisher Blue and Emerald City then painted on, misted with water and left to dry naturally.   

  Images from  Under the Sea were then stamped with Kingfisher Blue and Vodka Martini.

 

The Steampunk inspired mini panel was made by arranging strips of hammer card in a random patchwork pattern on to a10cmx10cm  grey board and adhere with Slap-It-On-Matt.  

Apply 3D paint dots along the seam edges and dry.    

 Glue pin, cardboard and resin shapes as shown and dry.  

 Paint the entire board with black Gee-Sso-Good. 

For the metal effect blend a little Gee-Sso-Good- Black with Sleeping Beauty paint and Raven Black with a little Hot Cocca paints on a plate/tile, 

Use a paintbrush to apply each paint mix in patches over the surface and blending together, when dry, repeat. 
 

Use a finger to apply Gee-Sso-Good white to highlight the raised areas and edges.   Dry brush PheasantBronze and Vodka Martini paints individually over the whole board, concentrating colour on the shapes and faux rivets. 

The image from Steampunkesque was stamped, heat embossed in clear, painted and fussy cut.  

The ship's wheel and anchor were die cut form kraft card and 3D Roman numerals to the value of 20,000 had Chocolate Box Megaflake applied with FlitterGlu.   

All the elements were adhered to the canvas and a colourful 'monster from the deep' made from paper clay and painted with IndigoBlu English Cottage Paints added to finish.

 Thank you for visiting today and I hope you are inspired!

 Take care,  Kay M x

Breath Deeply

Hello Cheremane here with you today. This month at IndigoBlu its all about stories. so here we go.

The girl behind the masked face was walking through a field on a beautiful sunny morning, she sat down in the middle of dandelion clock cluster, took a deep breath in and with one blow all the little dandelion heads took to the sky to float away to pastures new.

To begin I took a piece 6 x 6 of watercolour card and placed one half of the Girl in Profile stencil before spritzing with Stroke of Midnight Paint from the Junk and Disorderly range, To make the spritz I mixed one part paint to four parts water. 

With the other part of the Girl in Profile Stencil I covered up the spritzed part of the card. I added some Steam Whistle Paint to some phat foam and rubbed this over the face.

Once dry I used Leather Corset paint to stamp one of the grasses from Victorian Garden stamp set round the edge of the face. I just love using the IndigoBlu paints to stamp with.

Using flitterglu I stamped the dandelion from Victorian Garden stamp set and heat embossed it with super fine white embossing powder. The sentiment is from the fabulous Mindfulness stamp set. To finish off I edged the card with Leather Corset Paint and layered it onto a 7 x 7 card blank.

Thanks for joining me today, I hope you enjoyed the story.
Pop back soon to be Inspired.
Cheremane xx