Monday 24 September 2018

Halloween & Autumn Stamp release and Mini Tutorials from IndigoBlu

Hello there, what a change of weather we have been having in the UK. The nights are drawing in and the tree's are changing colour so that means Autumn has well and truly come.

Kay has just realised a new collection of Halloween and Autumn stamps which you may have seen on Hochanda last Friday with Lou Withers or on Face Book.



We, the TV design team had such a lot of fun with the stamps making up samples for the show we thought it would be fun to share some of them with you along with a mini tutorial for each sample.
If you have a favourite stamp but can no longer get it on Hochanda you can order direct from the IndigoBlu website. If you can't find what you are looking for on the site just give them a ring and they will advise or press a stamp set out for you, no matter if its an older stamp set you are after.
Before we get onto the mini tutorials here's a look at the latest releases.
  
                           



These stamps are pretty versatile and can be used for all sorts of crafts throughout the year and I have to say I'm really loving the 'Autumn Nights' stamp set, but the Skullduggery Boarders are a very close second.

The first tutorial is from Julie Atkinson
1. Start by stamping various script backgrounds into ‘Rice Paper’ and once dry adhere to a canvas panel using ‘Slap it On Matt’.
2. Using the ‘Blueprint Stencil’ and ‘True Grit Texture Paste’, add detail in three separate areas of the canvas. Mak
e sure you leave the top, right hand side clear where the light bulb will be positioned.
3. Once dry, begin adding ‘Townhouse Teal, Acrylic Paint’ to the outside 2/3. Blend through to nothing, leaving the centre clear. Now repeat this process with ‘Teal for Two and Indigo Blu Paints’. Blend the colours as before keeping the darker colour to just the outside edges, creating an ombré effect.
4. Apply ‘Banana Custard Acrylic to the middle of the canvas. Now take a little ‘Goldfinger Paint’ and blend through to the Teal colour. Use ‘Kingfisher Blue Metallic’ Paint to the centre blend to add my light to the paint.
5. Use your finger of Phatt Fiam to add a little more ‘Goldfinger Paint’ to the raised texture paste. Add ‘Black Gee so Good’ to the very outside edges of you want extra depth.
6. Stamp and cut out the ‘Giant Moth - Clarice Stamp’ and cut out. Stamp the small light bulb and moths from ‘Shine Bright’ onto the panel using Black Stazon. Stamp the words quite and cut out. 
7. Use a black permanent pen to doodle a wire for the light bulb to be suspended from.
8. Stick the moth image and words in place.

The next tutorial is from aitch aitch
To build up the background of this piece, I brayered burning bonfire, ugly duckling and white gesso onto a piece of watercolour card. Whilst it was still damp, I lifted some of the colour with a damp sponge through the circles stencil. 
I then went over areas again with the circles stencil, sponging through with the same colours as the background. I randomly stamped, in sepia versafine, the barbed wire circle and web from 'Skulduggery Borders'. 
On another sheet of watercolour card, I stamped the skull once and used the small skull from the Christmas Skullduggery stamp set to stamp 5 images, the owl from Autumn nights and a couple of the skull borders, all in black versafine which I then cut out.
 I then roughly placed the skulls and owl where I wanted them and stamped more cobwebs, the rat and spider on the background. 
I coloured the owl with ugly duckling mixed with a little burning bonfire and white gesso. I cut off the top of the skull and hinged it to the background using a brad and then assembled the skulls and owl. 
I finished with the sentiment.

This tutorial is for one of my samples Sue Ralph
I created this card using the 'Autumn Nights' Stamp set. The cobweb was stamped and embossed onto a panel of card with Gray embossing powder then Blue and Green ink was brushed over the panel building up a background colour. A  darker green ink was dabbed onto the bottom of the panel with the 'Media' stencil.
 To create a sheet of  card in Autumn shades, I used Burning Bonfire, Olive Waistcoat, Mulberry Bush and Sunshine Yellow paints with my Gelli plate and when this was dry the leaves were stamped out, then fussy cut out. 
Three lots of branch's of leaves were cut out and layered over the cobwebs and attached to the card panel on foam pads to give them more of a 3D look. 
The crow, owl and one of the mice were stamped and cut out. The owl was painted first with Porcelain paint then shaded in with touches of paint. The birds were nestled
The single leaves were attached with foam pads to look as if they were falling from the tree.
 The sentiment was stamped onto Acetate and two more mice were stamped either side of it with the cut out mouse placed on a foam pad close to a fallen leaf. 
The barbed wire circle from the  'Skullduggery Borders' set was used with two different shades of yellow ink for the sun.
The card panel was then attached to a card blank.

This next tutorial is Kay Molyneux
For this DL card, I cut a panel slightly smaller than the card blank. Stamped Skullduggerary boarder in black, added the raven and barbed wire ( from Tree Dressing) for the boarder, then heat embossed in clear powder. 
Carved Pumpkin and Spiced Marmalade inks were sponged over the panel, the skulls were painted with thin bleach. 
The boarder was masked off and skulls were stamped over the background in Hickory Smoke Distress Oxide. 
Black ink was sponged around the edges. 
The panel adhered to the card blank and a die cut sentiment added to finish. 

Here we have Emma Blakes Tutorial
 I started by die cutting a box using 1mm grey board and once box was put together I used True Grit Paste to add texture leaving it thicker in some places and left to dry.
I then stamped out the bat, heat embossed it then it in with colour using a few different shades of Luscious.
 Once dry I cut him out and put to one side.
I then painted the dry box with Stroke of Midnight Matt Acrylic Paint and added coloured embossing powder and heat dried the box and melted the powder,
Once this was totally dry, using a dry paintbrush, I painted vodka martini (silver) paint over the box to highlight the texture.
I layered fabric on top of the box and Slap it on Thick was used to stick it down and to 
add metal embellishments. I then glued my bat on the top and used slap it on thick to add silver art stones around the bat to add depth.

Now for Carolyn Lakin's tutorial
The main background was created by using the ‘Smooshing’ Technique. Distress Oxide was smeared on the glass mat, sprayed with water and mopped up with the card. Each colour (Abandoned Coral and Candied Apple) was added individually and dried so it didn’t mix the colours. Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide was used through the Web stencil and used to stamp with the Dinkie Script. 
The cobweb border from the ‘Skullduggery Border’ set was stamped across the top of the card twice. The skull border was stamped at the bottom of the card and this was also from the ‘Skullduggery’ set. The skulls were also stamped onto white card and fussy cut and layered over a few of the skulls. 
The mouse from the ‘Autumn Nights’ set was stamped in black onto white Shrink Plastic, fussy cut, shrunk and adhered above one of the skulls. 
The corners of an A5 white card blank were stamped with the cobwebs from the ‘Autumn Nights’ set. 
To finish, the main coloured card was matt and layered onto black card and the A5 card blank.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the tutorials as much as I have, as there are lots of brilliant hints and tips that can be used in your own crafting. I've learnt a thing or two so many thanks ladies.
Keep checking back as the TV Design Team are hoping to share more of their crafty knowledge with you. 
Please let us know if you enjoyed reading this post and if you would like to see more like it.

Don't forget you will find more inspiration and monthly Challenges on the I Love IndigoBlu Facebook page where you can also share your IndigoBlu makes with the group. (The link will only work if you are a FB user).


For now, Happy Crafting.
Sue xx






Tuesday 11 September 2018

Googly Spooky-Tastic Halloween Cards

Hi Everyone,

Mike here with a cute Halloween card series using two of the new release Halloween stamps from the release on the 21st September on Hochanda.

I batch made 8 of these googly eyed giggle cards using the new Skull & Cracked Glass stamps.


The cards are A6 in size, a perfect fit for these new stamps. I created 8 black A6 card bases and cut 8 pieces of Perfect White Stamping Card at a slightly smaller size to allow for a black border all the way around.

Using my stamp press and some Jet Black Archival ink I stamped out 8 of the skulls, one on each piece of the white stamping card.



Next, I stamped out a 9th on printer paper and cut out with scissors to act as a mask.


Laying the mask over each skull I used a combination of light green, orange and purple inks to blend colours around the outside of the card making sure the mask stayed in position.



I repeated the same process for all 8 of skull card fronts.

Once all 8 had the colour around the edges I took the Cracked Glass stamp, once again masking off the skull, and stamped in two opposite corners using the Jet Black Archival ink.


I  repeated the process on all 8 of the card fronts.

Next taking a spooky bat pattern stencil I added the same black ink through the stencil in the two remaining empty corners.



Once I had repeated this process on the remaining card fronts, I glued them to the fronts of the black card bases.

Next, I printed out an insert for the cards using my computer, then cut to fit the inside of the card base. I then glued the insert into the inside of each card.


For a final touch, using some glue, I stuck googly eyes onto each of the skulls eye sockets!


Adding the googly eyes turns the skull image from being a bit scary into a fun Halloween giggle!

I then teamed up each card with a C6 black envelope ready to post out to friends around the world.


I hope you like this simple one layer inked and stamped Halloween card, it's so easy and fun to create and you can make quite a few in a very short amount of time!



Friday 7 September 2018

Halloween Launch


Good Morning,

Carolyn here with you today and I'm sharing something new that will be launching later this month. Be sure to join Kay on Friday 21st September at 4pm on Hochanda to see these fabulous new designs. The DT are thoroughly enjoying making their spooky samples for the show. Thanks to Sue for the image below.



My idea was to use all the stamps and create a simple one layer card so I'll take you through a step by step of how I made this.


The first step was to decide how much of the card to mask. I used the 'Rule of Thirds' to help me position my stamped images. If you've not heard of this before it has been used by artists and photographers for centuries.It is considered a basic yet essential guideline to help compose an image and decide where to place the subject to create a well balanced image. The basic principle is to divide the card into 9 sections, 3 across and 3 down and where these intersect would be the strongest focal points


As I only wanted to divide my card vertically I masked my card on the dotted lines and I would stamp my images between these masked areas. I chose to stamp Batty first in the bottom left corner using my stamp platform.


Next I stamped Clarice the Giant Moth using Black Versafine in the top right corner. Both these were also stamped onto Post It Notes and cut out to create masks.


I then wanted the Skull to appear in the background so the masks were placed over Clarice and Batty before stamping the Skull.


The final stamp I used was the 'Cracked Glass' which also looks a little similar to a spiders web. So after creating a mask for the skull I free stamped the Cracked Glass in the blank areas.


The image below shows the stamped images after all the masks have been removed.


I had planned to leave it black and white but decided to give it a little colour. As it is for Halloween I decided to use Leather Corset and Burning Bonfire. These were watered down to give a muted effect plus I didn't want to lose the effect of the stamped images. I also drew a line either side of the images to define the edge and added a few zig-zags to break it up.


The final piece was matt and layered onto brown card an then onto an orange card blank.


I do hope you found this step by step useful and be sure to join Kay on the 21st to see what the rest of the DT have produced with these fantastic designs.

Have a wonderful day

Happy Crafting

Carolyn
x


Tuesday 4 September 2018

Trust






Hi, I hope you have had a lovely summer, what lovely sunny days we have enjoyed here in the UK!

Today I am thrilled to be using one of the brand new stamps, this one features a beautiful girl called Willow holding a cute friendly fox

.
I stamped her twice and fussy cut the fox from the second image. As she is holding the fox I included the girls  hands too.I dabbed some gesso  onto her hair to give it a slight texture before colouring.The fox looks very proud so I gave him a bushy tale using a little needle felting wool.After fussy cutting the girl, I adorned her with  a star necklace.



I used a 12.7 x 17.7 cm / 5  x 7 inch Canvas which I spritzed  with water, before using a damp sponge to dab on Hot cocoa, Warm Tan, Olive Waistcoat and Rouge paints. I dabbed it several times on scrap paper first until I achieved the density and colour I liked. 

I used the leftover paint on the sponge to dab onto the Script stamp and randomly stamped it over the canvas.

“ Trust” is the title of my canvas which is one of the words in the Faith stencil. I used fine texture paste in my chosen word and then  painted it in Hot Cocoa, and highlighted it with Penny Dreadful, and Coral Luscious.

I adhered the girl to the background and added some twigs, and other items from nature.I also stamped, and cut the small Hare from the fabulous new Guardian Angel new stamp. He wanted to join the picture too, not  just once but twice! Can you spot him? 


Happy Crafting xx