Kate Crane and Kay Carley Christmas Cards

 

Hey friends!  I'm sharing a few fun Christmas cards I made with my mom using gel prints.  These feature some lovely Kate Crane and Kay Carley Christmas stamps.

The deer and tree stamps are discontinued now, but the houses come from Kay's stamp set by PaperArtsy, EKC63.  I love this stamp set so much!  I layered with gel prints and used a variety of snowflake stencils from my stash and hand drawn hills, which I added shading with light grey ink and glittery accents.

This year Kate has released a gnome stamp set that would be just as cute here!

Inspired by Kay's product packaging, I made another card with a gel printed background and a row of houses.  I loved using the pencil trees between each house.  

I drew a little welcoming path.  I embossed the background with white snowflake stamps from the set.  Such fun!  I hope these cards brighten your day and give you some ideas for using your prints this Christmas.  xx, Autumn

How to Make Handmade Bookmarks with Watercolor and Gel Prints

 

Hey everyone!  I'm back today to share a couple batches of my handmade bookmarks.  I'm being painfully honest with you by saying I was never much of a reader.  I just never took time to read books and even with art articles I was interested in, I would generally skim them over.  What a pity, I know!  Well, several years back I decided to truly become a REAL READER.  After a while, I decided to start documenting my reads in an Excel spreadsheet.  Long story short, we went to Mall of Georgia to the massive Barnes and Noble for my son's birthday this past weekend and I was perusing the isles, I kept noting, "hey I've read that!"  I was really surprised and happy!  It got me to wondering just how many books I've read these past few years so I did a quick tally and the grand total is 99 books!  <insert happy dance>

It's no surprise that I've also found a small addiction to making handmade bookmarks because I am prone to read about 3 to 5 novels simultaneously and have several art books in process as well, so I need a good many bookmarks, plus I love to give them as gifts.  Yes, that is definitely me showing why I was never a good reader, because I am totally ADD.  But actually reading has helped me a lot with focus and minor memory issues.  

I recently posted on IG my latest watercolor bookmark collection.  I like to take a 9x12 sheet of Canson watercolor paper and use it for practice, you know to get my hand warmed up to fluid motion and control.  

I simply paint one type of flower all over the page, then repeat with another and another, some leaves, berries, etc. until I have a nice full composition.  I then cut the sheet into 2.25x7" strips.  I use a corner rounder for the edges and add tassels.  I love the serendipity of seeing what sections appear in the cut apart pieces and the general looseness of these play pages.  I recommend THESE tassels from Amazon.  They are much nicer than others I've ordered and quite reasonable.  

Well, I also love love love do dabble in gel printing, especially with botanical elements, but also with stencils and my beloved PaperArtsy Fresco chalk acrylic paints.  

I have piles and piles of prints and thought it time to try out Susan McCreevy's technique for transforming them into beautiful artsy bookmarks.  I did not use matboard, as Susan did in her video HERE, but used an Avery permanent glue stick and adhered my pieces to black cardstock instead.  

Actually, these were some of my least favorite prints and maybe just one part of the page was worth using.  This made the process even more rewarding.  I love a good trash to treasure project indeed!  

I hope you like my bookmarks and my little story of overcoming an obstacle in my life, resulting in a truly beneficial pleasure.  Please let me know in the comments what some of your favorite reads are.  xx, Autumn

Vintage Gel Printed Accordion Book Tutorial

Hi everyone and happy spring!  I've enjoyed some playtime with my mom this spring and we've done a lot of gel printing.  I was trying to think of a way we could use our stash prints and decided we should make an accordion book.  I picked one of my favorite 8x10" prints and cut it in two to cover two pieces of 4 x 6.5" chipboard, wrapped around the sides with mitered edges.

Here is my pile of gel prints.  Honestly, I didn't put a dent in this set alone!  This project didn't take as much printed paper as I had hoped...  But it was a fun project nonetheless.

I cut two pieces of white cardstock and scored them to fit inside and adhered the overlap to make the accordion panels.  Then I glued these to each cover and covered with gel prints measuring slightly smaller than the covers, 

I looked at my wooden stamp display and was inspired by this darling Character Constructions girl and called up a good friend and asked to borrow some of her doll stamps so I could complete my book.  Thanks Barbara!

I stamped all of my dolls onto book pages and added a bit of watered Tea Dye Distress Ink to give them a slight coloration.

Next I dipped all of my die cut Tim Holtz Wildflower in a combination of Tea Dye, Walnut Stain and Rusty Hinge Distress Inks.  

I mixed in my favorite scripture stamps with other favorite old wood mount stamps.

I always enjoy stamping on old paper.  Here I tea dyed some graph paper and it was a great backdrop to the scripture.

How many of you still own these stamps.  Personally, I treasure mine!  Both my friend and I have them on display in our art rooms.  

Here's a shot of mine from last year.  I've since changed things up a little, but still love this image.

I also took some free vintage label images and overlaid a typed font scripture and printed it.  I love the look and pop of aqua!

My finished book is a little busy, but fun to inspect.  I really hope it has made you smile today and has you considering how to incorporate your old stamps into your current work.  

I finished the book off with a sari ribbon binding.  

I just loved this particular gel print and was happy to make it the focal point of my book.  Happy crafting!  xx, Autumn

 

Free Printable Promises Digi Stamp for Rainbow Inspirational Cards

 

Hi friends!  Today I have a fun project to share with you.  I've been gifted some beautiful inspiration card stacks over the past couple of years and have noticed that them for sale in stores a lot too.  I came across a neat 4x6" wooden recipe storage box at the thrift store and snatched it up.  I finally decided to get busy creating some inspirational art to fill my box.  

For these cards I used some favorite Jofy stamps by PaperArtsy and hand lettered sentiments.  I've uploaded these Promises Sentiment to share with you.  You can download and print your own HERE.  (Note: it will look all black because there is no background, which will allow you to overlay the text onto an image if you so choose.  But on white paper it will show as black text.  :) )

You may remember my first two cards I created for Sweet 'N Sassy Stamps HERE.  Scripture stamps make it so much easier of course, but this time I wanted to do some hand lettering and really enjoyed the personal touch.  I used ProCreate on my iPad.

I made some layered bright gel prints for the bases and added stamping from JOFY92, including the scallops as "clouds."  The rainbow is from JOFY110 and I colored it with brush markers and water.  The tiny text is from Eclectica Mini 88 by Scrapcosy.  Now the fun part will be to trade these with friends and fill up my box!  I look forward to sharing more soon.  

For more inspo on these fab rainbow stamps see my last post HERE. xx, Autumn

PaperArtsy Jofy Mixed Media Gel Printed Cards and Topflight Stamps Birthday Blog Hop

Hi friends!  Thanks for stopping by today for the Topflight Stamps 7th birthday.  To celebrate, I’ve teamed up with some great designers to showcase celebratory projects using the unique products available at Topflight Stamps.  Please hop along with us and see all the beautiful talent from this group of amazing designers!  There is a master list of Hop stops on the Topflight Stamps blog! We are also Hopping on Instagram! You can start at the Topflight Stamps account @topflightstamps.  Did we mention there will be prizes?!

I've created a series of artsy mixed media cards using Gel Press printed backgrounds and fabulous stamps by PaperArtsy.  I fell in love with these moody prints I made using a combination of Fresco Chalk Acrylics in Sargasso, Bougainvillea, and Slimed.  I didn't use any stencils for these backgrounds, just vivid color.  I was able to get color variation on the plate by using my 2" Speedball Brayer and adding color in small sections to cover the gel plate.  

The focal stamp set is by Jofy, set JOFY112, an absolute joy to work with!  I stamped in black Versafine onto my prints, then again onto Bristol and colored with my Prism brush markers.  I fussy cut the leaves only and used foam tape to add them for dimension.  

For my backgrounds I did some white embossing with the Jofy branch and a fun mini stamp by Tracy Scott, EM61.  I also used mini stamp EM58 in black to resemble washi tape.  

I sewed around each of my panels and finished with some paint pen scripty doodles and sticker sentiments.  I just love how these cards turned out and hope they inspire you today!  

GIVEAWAY DETAILS: Of course, it wouldn’t be a birthday celebration without prizes!  Topflight Stamps is giving four lucky winners $50 Gift Certificates to the store.  Two winners will be chosen from commenters on the blog hop and two will be chosen from commenters on the IG hop.  For a chance to win, make sure to visit the stops on the hop and leave a comment by April 1st.  Winners will be announced on the Topflight Stamps blog on Monday, April 3rd.  (U.S.A winners only due to shipping issues.)  Good luck my friends!  Meanwhile, check out the fabulous birthday sale and have an awesome spring! xx, Autumn