Watercolour Effects

I've been doing a fair few watercolour effests with rubber stamps lately and I've been asked to explain how to do it so here goes.

First of all choose your stamp. The one that I have here is the rose from the Flowers and Leaves sheet by Time To Stamp.

I chose three colours to ink up the stamp. Art and Graphic 55, 56, 202.

I dabbed the ink onto the stamp and stamped it onto white card. You can see in the image below that the leaves are dabbed with both of the greens. If you use just one of them it will look like a cartoon.

As you can see the image is very stark. Not really what you want. Now take the Kuretake H2O brush, I used the fine detailer, and add a little water to your chosen areas. The ink will flow and you can use the brush to direct the flow.

While the image is still wet you can add more colour if you feel that it needs it. I added a little pink to the thorns and leaves as that is what they look like in nature.

Calligraphy pens for anything but...

When I was at a recent show many people loved the calligraphy pens but they didn't think that they would be clever enough to use them for writing. So here's another use for calligraphy pens that needn't frighten you.

First of all you'll need at least two calligraphy pens in toning colours. I've used a light and a dark one from the Heart pouch set.

What I then did was touch the side of the lightest pen with the dark pen.

This will allow you to write in two colours. Below is an example of simple writing using the two tones.

However, I did say that this set of instructions was for anything but calligraphy so this is what I did next.

I kept the darker edge of the pen still and moved the light side in a rough quarter turn and got a petal. I then moved the paper a bit and repeated the above. I did this until I got about 5 petals. Just remember to move the paper round every time you want a new petal.

Now that you have a flower head you can add a stem and a couple of leaves. Mine are not the best here I must admit. I did them better on the card example.

I then did a few flower heads and joined them with a few strokes of a green pen. I layered this up and tied it with ribbon and there was a topper.

Now I could have left it as a simple topper but I wanted a bit more so I decided to use the pen to make background paper. All I did for this was made simple petals as I explained above and kept on moving the pen and the paper. Do some upside down and some to the left some to the right to make them look like random petals.

I added a tiny green stem and used the sheet to make a background paper for the following card.

As you can see I didn't even use the pen to write the message. I did put a line of petals at the top of the card though.

More to follow.

How to customise a die cut flower.

I have random thoughts now and then and I suddenly thought of how to use the die cut flower heads and the brushable pens that I have on the Craft Fairy site to bring a bit of excitement into my cards.

So this is what we do

Take the plain white die cut hibiscus flower heads. See below.




At the moment they are fairly boring but I am going to transform them.

Step one:

Colour the flower with the paler of your chosen brushables.

Step two:
The deeper tone is used to brush out from the centre.

Step three:
The deepest of your chosen colours is used to flick the colour out from the centre and it is kept shorter than the other two colours.

Step four:
Use a silver pen to add strokes to the centre and edges of the flower.

Step five:

Stick the centre to the flower. You can curl the petals if you wish.

Bag Instructions

I have been asked for instructions on making the little bag that I posted in the earlier Blog so here goes.


I have scanned a bag with the fold lines drawn in and posted it below:

I used an A4 sheet of heavy paper for this bag. Light weight paper will not do, neither will card.

Draw the lines lightly in pencil on to your chosen sheet and score along these lines.

Fold along the score lines and glue the 1cm fold to the inside of the 3cm fold on the opposite side of the bag. This will form a tube. Let it dry. The time that it takes to dry will vary with the type of glue that you use.

Now fold the top of the bag over towards the inside of the tube. There is no real need to glue this.

Holes can be punched to thread the handles through. I used a single round hole punch. I marked the place for the holes first. Punch both the front and the back at the same time so that the holes are level.

Fold the lines along the base of the bag as if you were making up a parcel. Glue together. To provide extra strength you can glue a piece of lightweight card to the inside of the base of the bag.

Let me know if you can follow these instructions and, if not, I can amend them

Karate Kids

The other day someone came onto my site looking for Karate Kid dies by Sizzix. As no such die exists I thought that it would be a good idea if I showed everyone how it is done. You do need several dies though but the avid Sizzix die enthusiast will have these.

You will need
Doll body
Doll overall
Doll dungarees
Winter Clothes
Bath Robe
Doll Hair
A selection of cardstock

Cut out the body,
1 overall,
1 bathrobe,
1pair of dungarees
the hair,
the scarf from the winter clothes in the belt colour of your choice.

This should be five pieces in total. I cut a small amount off the trouser hems to make them shorter.
Glue the dungarees to the body and then glue the robe on top.
Position the scarf to act as a belt and glue to the robe.
Glue the hair in place and using a pen define the edges to make it look more 3d.
Draw in the eyes and mouth. I did the ones in the example free hand.

What do you think?