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Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

alcohol markers

Holiday Lilies with Simon Says Stamp!

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

Hi friends! I am back today with another project featuring the lily stamp from my new Festive Bouquets illustrations. When researching flowers for my drawing, I always look at different floral arrangements for weddings and holidays, and I was struck by how frequently large lilies are used in holiday bouquets. I couldn’t remember ever seeing a holiday lily stamp before, so I created a large arrangement to use on your holiday cards and was super fun to color!! Let’s get started with the details on my project.

I began by stamping the lily image from the Festive Bouquets stamp set onto some Hammermill white cardstock using Intense Black ink. I then used OLO markers to create vivid red, almost a bright coral, lilies and lime green foliage. This image would be beautiful in no-line style, as well, but I think that the crisp black lines with the vivid red flowers are such a classic pairing that I couldn’t resist using it for this project. I die cut the image with the coordinating die.

To add some subtle, but still festive, texture behind my floral bouquet, I ran an A2 panel of Hammermill white cardstock through my die cut machine using the new Twining Berries embossing folder. This embossing folder has such classic holiday botanical imagery and added such lovely texture behind my floral bouquet. The only enhancement that I made was to add some shimmering gold watercolor splatters to the embossed panel, though this panel would also be gorgeous colored with your choice of medium!! I added my floral bouquet to the bottom corner of my card front and trimmed off the excess from the edges. To coordinate with the gold splatters on the background, I also added some shimmering gold to the centers of the lilies.

For the sentiment, I heat embossed a greeting from the Graceful Holiday Greetings set onto some black cardstock using gold sparkle embossing powder. I die cut the greeting with the coordinating die, then added a sentiment strip from the CZ Design Typed Christmas Sentiment Strips cards. These cards are printed with toner, so they can be foiled using a Minc or a laminator. Such fun to add that little extra bit of shine! I popped up the greeting pieces on the embossed card front using foam adhesive, then added a few iridescent red gems for extra sparkle.

Well, that’s all for my project today! Simple, elegant, and lots of shimmer and shine to make it extra festive. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Altenew September 2023 Marvelous Monthly Series Release Blog Hop + Giveaway ($300 in Total Prizes!)

Hi friends! Today, we are hopping along to celebrate the September 2023 Marvelous Monthly release! You should have arrived here from Svitlana, and your next stop is Seeka. You can also start back at the beginning at the Altenew Blog. The Build-A-Garden sets tend to be my favorites each month, because of the great value as well as the beauty of the designs themselves. The Build-A-Garden: Frilly Begonias set is truly gorgeous, with two large arrangements of begonias and foliage, gorgeous sentiments, and fun simple coloring stencils. You can also purchase the Build-A-Garden: Frilly Begonias + Add-On Die Bundle if you would also like to have the coordinating dies (both for the flowers and the large sentiments!). If you find yourself loving the Build-A-Garden series each month, you can become a subscriber HERE to make sure that you get first dibs and a discount! I chose to do some coloring with alcohol markers for my project today, so let’s get started with the details!

I began my project by heat embossing the large image from Build-A-Garden: Frilly Begonias using Altenew’s Rose Gold Embossing Powder, offsetting the image so that it was dripping off of the side. I then used alcohol markers to add some muted coral and warm teal to the images. I love that these colors are somewhat muted in overall tone, but still vibrant and can pop off of the page! To create a halo around the image, I blended around the edges of the A2 panel using a blending brush and Water Hyacinth Fresh Dye Ink. I splattered the entire panel with some coordinating metallic watercolor to add some artistic sparkle, as well.

To add a little interest to the layout, I used my trimmer to trim a 1/4″ segment out from the side of my colored, blended panel. I backed the open area with a piece of coordinating rose gold glitter paper from the Golden Sunrise glitter gradient cardstock pack. This creates a sparkly peek-a-boo strip amongst the colorful background!

For the greeting, I heat embossed and die cut two of the different greetings included in the Build-A-Garden: Frilly Begonias + Add-On Die Bundle. I popped these greeting pieces up with some foam adhesive to give them extra dimension, then added a few shimmering blue gems for one last bit of texture and sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project today. Now for some fun giveaway information:

$300 in total prizes! To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $100 gift certificate to 1 lucky winner and a $40 gift certificate to 5 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by 09/25/2023 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 6 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on 09/27/2023.
*The winner of the $100 gift certificate will be chosen from comments left on the Altenew blog. 

Here’s the full hop list:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy hopping!

Simon Says Stamp STAMPtember + Altenew!

Being able to play with the different collaboration stamp sets for Simon Says Stamp’s STAMPtember celebration is such a joy and helps reinforce my love of this hobby-turned-job, which is basically the entire point of STAMPtember!! The Altenew STAMPtember collaboration set is indicative of Altenew’s general aesthetic: elegant. I had such fun coloring this beautiful rose arrangement, adding a few special touches to make it really pop. Let’s get started with the details!

To start, I stamped the Altenew STAMPtember collaboration stamp set using Contour Ink from Hero Arts onto a mini-slimline card front of Hammermill cardstock. I wanted to highlight the beautiful and detailed stamp with a simple layout, so I stamped the bouquet smack dab in the center of this mini-slimline card front. I colored the images in some lovely shades of coral and red, with warm green foliage, using OLO markers. When working with alcohol markers, I always try to make sure that I have at least four markers in a gradient to ensure that I have maximum contrast and depth. No-line coloring can be a bit fussy, but the only part that I find truly challenging is the flower centers. Those tiny areas are a bit difficult to get perfect, so I have a trick to share with you: opaque pens. I used the Karin Star Sparks Deco Gel Pens and Karin Milky Way Deco Gel Pens to add the stamens to the center of each flower, using a few different colors to add variety and interest! I just love how this turned out!

Because I wanted to keep things simple to allow that beautiful floral bouquet to stay the star of my card, I created a simple frame around my colored image using 1/4″ masking tape right up against the edges of my mini-slimline card front. I used a blending brush to lightly blend Altenew Dusty Rose Fresh Dye Ink around my colorful image. The light shade of warm pink accents the red flowers beautifully without altering the colored image.

For the greeting, I heat embossed one of the sentiments from the Altenew STAMPtember collaboration set onto some white cardstock using Rose Gold embossing powder from Altenew. I trimmed the sentiment down and popped it up on the colored, blended panel using foam adhesive. I added a few shimmering gems for one last sparkling touch!

Well, that’s all for my project today! The gorgeous Altenew STAMPtember collaboration set also comes as a set with dies so that you can easily create beautiful cards with dimensional die cuts, as well! If you love this set as much as I do, I wouldn’t wait too long, because these sets usually sell out very quickly, and once they’re gone, they won’t be restocked. Thanks so much for stopping by, and happy STAMPtember!!

Moody Blue Cosmos with Simon Says Stamp!

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

Hi friends! I feel like I have been a little quiet lately, as I’m prepping for all of the upcoming STAMPtember fun at Simon Says Stamp as well as packing/preparing to move into my new studio space! (EEK!) My husband has been working so hard to give me a beautiful new space, and I can’t wait to share it with you. In the meantime, I have a few projects to share with you. Today’s project features a gorgeous background stamp from Simon Says Stamp that I’ve had for quite awhile and for some reason have never used: Cosmos Background. I fell in love with the beautiful details in the background, which could easily be used on it’s own to create a gorgeous pattern, but I wanted to do some coloring! (Shocker, right?) Let’s get started with the details!

I began by stamping the Cosmos Background on Hammermill cardstock using Intens-ified Black ink. I then used OLO markers to color the cosmos flowers in brilliant shades of blue. We do not have enough blue flowers, in my opinion, especially this vivid, almost fluorescent shade of blue! To create maximum contrast between the bright blue flowers, I used a black OLO marker to fill in the background of the stamped image. I particularly like to use OLO markers for super color saturated areas like this; they’re very juicy and provide great, even coverage.

After I had finished coloring the blue flowers, I used some shimmering handmade watercolors to add some extra special sparkling highlights to the flowers. I also added some of the shimmering silver watercolors to the center of the flowers. The shine is nigh impossible to catch in a photograph, but it adds such a special detail to the card!! I trimmed down the final product to a thick strip for the center of my card front, placed it on my black card front with double sided adhesive, then added a couple of coordinating blue foil strips. The blue foil helps to add a bit of textural interest as well as create a visual barrier between the colorful patterned section and the crisp black background!

For the greeting, I heat embossed a sentiment from Spring in my Step onto some heavyweight vellum using sparkling embossing powder, then die cut it with the coordinating die. I also heat embossed a greeting strip from the same stamp set onto a strip of black cardstock using silver embossing powder. I popped both of the sentiment pieces up on the colorful floral background, then searched my stash for some coordinating gems. The black base with shimmering blue coating over the top of the Midnight Blue crystals from Studio Katia worked exceptionally well with this moody blue card!

Well, that’s all for my project today! Do you have any stamps that you just had to have but haven’t used yet? I encourage you to take a look at your stash and see which sets need a little love! It’s so satisfying to finally put your crafty purchases to use! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!

Accenting Focal Points with Thin Frames!

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

I have really been trying hard to use stamps in my stash to which I haven’t given much love, especially stamps that I have illustrated. This enormous Beautiful Bouquet stamp that I illustrated for Simon Says Stamp early last year has not seen enough love from me, and I am determined to change that! I get so much inspiration for bouquet arrangements and color combinations from the wedding florists that I follow on Instagram, and one of my favorite things about coloring a bouquet like this is that the overall look can change completely depending on the color selections that you make! I created a completely different aesthetic on THIS card by using brighter colors, but today I wanted to focus on some more muted shades of lilac and periwinkle, with a “white” rose. I also pulled out one of my favorite unsung heroes from my die collection: A7 Thin Frames dies. Let’s get started with the details.

I began by stamping the ginormous bouquet from Beautiful Bouquet onto a 5″x7″ panel of Hammermill cardstock using black pigment ink, then clear embossing over the top. Normally, I would use alcohol marker-friendly dye ink, but I wanted those lines to be super stark and black, and the clear embossing powder over the top really defines the crisp black lines and makes them pop.

I colored the images using my OLO markers in shades of periwinkle and lilac for the large anemone and hydrangea blooms, then used some grayish purple markers with my Zero marker to create the “white” rose. I simply concentrated the light purple and almost-transparent gray markers towards the center of the flower to create shadows, then softened the edges with the Zero marker to allow the shadows to fade to the white of the cardstock.

After I had finished coloring the images, I used a blending brush to very lightly blend Heather ink around the edges of my card, creating the softest of halos around my vividly colored image. I recently added the A7 Thin Frames dies to my stash. I find myself reaching for the A2 Thin Frames constantly, so I added the and the Circle Thin Frames to my stash. The thin frames are the perfect clean accent for your focal point, whether it is a large floral like this, critters, or a more graphic background. They are an investment up front, but I find them totally invaluable on so many styles of card!! The addition of a thin frame around the edge of your focal point creates such an incredibly clean and polished look; I use it constantly. I die cut the A7 Thin Frames dies from some Pitch Black cardstock, further accenting the crisp lines of the black embossed lines of the floral image.

For the greeting, I kept things simple with a dimensional black Big Hugs die. I die cut the Big Hugs die three times from more Pitch Black cardstock and adhered them together using liquid adhesive. I adhered the dimensional die cut to the center of the lower third of my card. The black sentiment, black frame, and black lines of the image tick the boxes to complete the “rule of three” for the embellishments! The final touch was to add some sparkling gems for a bit of sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project today. If you haven’t checked out the Thin Frames dies at Simon Says Stamp, you’re missing out! They’re a staple at my craft desk, for sure. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!