Lilies for April

April 15th 2024 - not only tax time, but also time for a new Beautiful Blossoms Challenge - where anything goes as long as a floral is the focal image. Here is our gorgeous inspiration board:

When I saw the lilies I knew I wanted to use the new Clear Stamp and Die of the Month Feb. 2024 from Spellbinders called Lily Arch. It is a really pretty set and I love when a die cuts out all the "in-between" bits of the image. 

The teal set was stamped with Altenew's Obsidian Black Pigment Ink onto Ranger's Tim Holtz Watercolor Card Stock. I used Altenew's Crystal Clear Embossing Powder over it while it was still wet and heat set. The image below was stamped on the same paper with Versamark Ink and set with Ranger Ink's Princess Gold Embossing Powder.

Both floral images were water colored with Mungyo's Professional 48 Pan Watercolors and Silver Black Velvet #8 and #6 watercolor brushes. 

Both cards have an ink blended background over a stencil I found in my stash. Unfortunately it has no name etched in it. I do love a good circle stencil for a subtle background! I ink blended Ranger Ink's Distress Ink Tumbled Glass on the teal card and The Stamp Market Cactus on the gold/green card.

I almost always use a die with some sort of design texture around the edge...for 2 reasons: 1) I get a nice straight edges and 2) it brings interest and movement to the card. For these cards I used Penny Black's Creative Dies #51-706 semi-circle stackers. 

Thank you for stopping by and visiting my blog today. Come join us...we'd love to see your florals!

I will also be submitting to: NBUS

for this is the first time I've used the Lily Arch set.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

RAM for Paper Funday

Welcome to April 2024 Paper Funday Challenge where Anything Goes! Rachelle Ann Miller was one of our generous sponsors this month and I decided to use her digital image called Animal Balloons for some baby cards for my daughter's shop!

I want to show how to mask a digital stamp to be able to create a background over the images. First, I created the card by printing the digital stamp with a Brother Laser Printer onto Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Card Stock. Then I was ready to mask the background.

Start with an older brush that will fit your image. As a tole painter, I have a stash called "Seen Better Days" and I picked one from that set. Run the brush over a bar of soap, coating it, otherwise the brush you use will be ruined. I use Pebeo Drawing Gum and find it to work perfectly! Dip your soap-coated brush into the Pebeo (I like the blue color so you can see where you've applied it) and just paint all the images that need to stay white. 

Get into all the little spots so that the background remains white. You can see how the images were completely covered. Let dry, but not for days and days. I gave it about a half hour.

Now to create the background, I used Distress Oxide Tumbled Glass with my sponges and A Colorful Life Designs Stencil called Cloud Edger. 

I buy a set sponges from Amazon and cut into pie shapes. I make a "handle" with a punch I have from Stampin' UP and staple it to the top of the pie shaped sponge. I prefer to use these instead of blending brushes, round sponges, etc. Much cheaper and in my opinion work even better once saturated. If they get worn out, I just replace with a new piece of sponge.

Now to remove you can use a residue art eraser (as seen in the picture above) or just rub the blue Pebeo with your finger and pull it gently off the paper. You can see the hole in the balloon in the picture above where I started to remove the Pebeo Drawing Gum.  

Once the mask is removed completely and the background was completed you're ready to color. 

I watercolored the cute cute image with Mungyo Professional Half Pan Water Colors Set of 48. 

The sides were edged with an eyelet border from Spellbinder Winter Borders Die Set.  I love border sets and this one in particular has 8 different dies.

For the 2nd card it was created basically the same, but I use Distress Oxide Salty Ocean for a little darker background color.

The sentiments came from a retired RAM (Rachelle Ann Miller) MFT set called Number Fun 1. Here are the 2 cards together:

Thanks so much for sticking to the end. Hopefully this tutorial helped for those wanting to delve into digital stamps.

Come join us at The Paper Funday Challenges. We love to see your work!

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.