Butterfly Reflections, Ink

Hello and Good-bye.  Norine here, from The Velvet Lemon , with my last post for this Design Team term.  I have thoroughly enjoyed my 4 months here and I hope I've shared with you some ideas and techniques that have inspired you.  I hope to continue sharing my work here in the future when there are gaps in the blog schedule that need to be filled!  Todays cards were just such a pleasure to create!  I used the stamp set from Strawberry Jude called Squirrel Mail , as well as the Focus on You floral stamps from Altenew to create the little flower bush around the base of the mailbox post.  I stamped with Copic friendly ink and colored the images with Copic markers.  I also stamped the images onto Eclipse masking paper so that I could blend-ink the background with Ranger Distress Oxide inks .  To delineate the line between grass and sky better, I sketched a line and added some grass strokes with a Copic Multiliner pen. As much as I hated...

Sorry guys, that's the lamest of blog titles, but it was the best my poor, tired brain could come up with! Norine from The Velvet Lemon , back with you today with some pretty layered stamping floral cards. I got to use a fun variety of products this week, to create these cards and I'm going to share them all with you here. To start with, I wanted to play with my new Altenew Crisp Dye Inks , to get a feel for the various color combinations.  So I used the floral stamp from the Story of Us floral layering stamp set from Altenew to try the various ink combinations and the flower I used on the gingham card is the Red Cosmos series , while the one on the quilted background card below uses the Tea Party ink set .  The leaves are a mix of Frayed Leaf for the base with a tad of Minty Mint thrown in here and there, and then layered, or actually just restamped with darker shades around the edges using Forest Glade , and Moss . The gingham card uses the Many Than...

Hello BRI friends, Norine from The Velvet Lemon , back again with a critter card. I made this card using the Waffle Flower Autumn Time stamp set , stamping, coloring with Copics, and fussy cutting the pieces (perhaps I need to order the coordinating die set ?) to assemble them all into a cute garden scene.  Complete with a tuckered out fox!  I die, I tell you! I stamped the horizon line onto post-it paper so that I could blend a grass and sky background without overlapping.  The sentiment is from the Friendly Fox (detect a theme here?) by Right at Home and I cut it into 3 pieces so I could stamp it vertically.  When I need to stamp it again in a horizontal line, I can easily butt the pieces up against each other and you'll never know the difference.   Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Hi friends, Norine from The Velvet Lemon here, back again for a 2nd day in a row! Today I'm sharing a piece of home decor that I made using the Watercolor Bouquet Stencil from Altenew and some stamps from the Forever and Always stamp set, also from Altenew .  Oh and HEY!  Have you see the gorgeous April Mood Board that was posted back here ?  It's what I used to inspire the colors for this project! Ok, where to start.  So I laid the big part of the stencil onto the watercolor paper and then used my real brush pens to color in the openings, going section by section and lifting the stencil up between sections to wet the ink with a paint brush and move the color around a little, even dragging it out and away from the shape in some places.  For this first step I used the lighter colors of the coral and green. Then I let that air dry.  I mostly prefer air drying with watercolors because it's a nicer, more natural look than zapping it w...

Hey, hey BRI friends!  We're hopping today to celebrate the 4th Birthday of Altenew , one of our favorite stamping companies!  You should have arrived here from the Altenew blog , and we're glad you're here to share the excitement! There are prizes and inspiration and it's going to be FUN! With you today, is Norine from The Velvet Lemon  creating for Butterfly Reflections Ink  and I have some projects to share today, that I made using some recently released Altenew products .   First up, are these two cards created with the Mega Succulent stamp set .   I stamped the image onto water color paper using the MISTI , then turned on the music and sat and colored.   I used Faber Castell watercolor pencils so I could more easily control where the color would sit and then painted with a water brush .  I stamped the sentiment onto a piece of vellum, heat embossed with clear embossing powder to ensure that the ink wouldn't smudge...

Hello BRI friends!  Norine from The Velvet Lemon back with you today with a critter card to share!  I'll confess, I'm not even positive I know what kind of critter this is, but that didn't stop me from having fun stamping, coloring and creating a card with him!   I used an aDORable stamp set from Waffle Flower called, Summer Time to stamp on Neenah Solar White card stock, color with Copic markers, and fussy cut all the pieces. To create the background of the card, I stamped the horizon line onto some Post-It paper and cut it out to use as a mask.  Then I used a foam blending tool to apply Ranger Distress Ink (Faded Jeans, Cracked Pistachio and Evergreen Bough) above and below the horizon.  Then I spritzed it with water and daubed off some color as it dried. Each of the components from the stamp set are fussy cut and glued into place to create the vignette.  I combined a couple of stamp sets to create the title; the hello is from Ri...

Hello BRI friends, Norine from The Velvet Lemon , back with you for another Friday post!  Today I have two cards to share, made with my new Altenew Rose Flurries 3D dies .  Aren't those layered roses delicious??   I die cut all my layers from watercolor paper and then painted them.  It's a pretty easy way to get four levels of shading from dark to light with just one color of paint, just by adding more water to the paint with each layer.  I did play around with a couple of the flowers introducing another shade to the layers for some extra interest. For the background of this card I dry embossed a card stock panel with the Taylored Expressions Cross Stitch embossing folder .  In my head and heart, there is a link between the vintage florals like these layered sets, and the cross stitched gingham aprons my grandmother used to make and wear, so it seemed apropos to use them together on this card.   Both cards have a little sent...

Hi, hello!  Norine from The Velvet Lemon , here with you today!  I recently received a rather large order from the Butterfly Reflections store , and let me just say....it's going to be florals, florals, florals for the next little while!  (The words florals and happy are interchangeable in my vocabulary!) I love this technique of "hiding" the die cut word in the colored design.  It's harder to see and appreciate straight on in a photo, but the tactile aspect in real life is so cool!  I used the two gorgeous floral stamps in the Altenew Forever and Always stamp set (couldn't choose between, so...), along with sentiments from MFT - Lots of Hugs (Sending Handmade) , and Lawn Fawn - Happy Happy Happy (To You) to accompany the die cut word, also from MFT ! For this first card, I wanted a plainer effect, where only the letters stand out, (literally and figuratively, as it turns out) so I left the background plain as oatmeal, and just randomly co...

Hi friends of BRI!  Norine here with you today!  Weird blog post title, right?  Hang on, I'll get to that in a second. So, I've been dying to use this Floral Background stamp from The Stamp Market for weeks now.  I gave it a test run back here , but I really wanted to make a project where it's beautiful design was the focus.   I tried a few versions of this technique, first with Gelatos, then the Prima IOD water soluble oil pastels , to little success, and a bunch of wasted watercolor paper.  Coloring directly onto a stamp with  heavily pigmented crayons like those, and then spritzing water on the stamp and stamping onto watercolor paper, is a fun technique, but one that produces a very loose and watery style, and I wanted something more defined for this project. So I switched to Strathmore Bristol smooth cardstock, and water-based pens.  Tombows, Distress markers , any kind of water-based marker will do.   And here's ...

Hi, hello!  Norine here, with a couple of die cut cards to share.  You guys.  This Doodled Lace Cover die by Altenew isn't playing fair! It feels like such a cheat to simply die cut some cardstock, slap it on a card front and instantly have a beautiful card!  It should be harder than that! So, to elevate the amount of effort and thus feel better about myself (wink), after die cutting the complete background panel, I scissor-cut the main floral element from another die cut piece, colored it up with Copics (R01, R20, R32 for the petals and G12, G21, G24 for the leaves) and popped it up on foam tape.  I also die cut the word "hello" from grey card stock  with this Pretty Pink Posh Script die , stamped the word "friend" using the Altenew Halftone Hello set , and adhered that strip over the card background. Then I added some hole-less silver sequins and called it done! I really fell in love with that single floral element thoug...