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Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

no line watercolor

Altenew June 2022 Today is the Day Collection Release Blog Hop + Giveaway ($300 in total prizes)

Hi there! Altenew is releasing their new Today is the Day collection, and we’re hopping along to share all of the fabulous new products with you! You should have arrived here from Jennifer McGuire, and your next stop is Vicky Papaioannou. You can start back at the beginning at the Altenew Blog in case you get lost! I have a dainty, feminine watercolored project to share with you today, so let’s get started with the details!

I began by stamping the beautiful new Sentimental Florals stamp using some no-line coloring ink on Altenew Watercolor Paper. I used the Artists 24 Pan Watercolor set to add some delicate purple, pink, and green watercolor to the image, mixing and matching colors to create completely custom colors. I am really enjoying mixing my own colors with the Altenew palette-so many possibilities with 24 colors!

Once the image had dried, I die cut it with the coordinating die from the Sentimental Florals die set. I also die cut a subtle, delicate background using the Dotted Tiles Debossing die from some creamy white cardstock. This creamy white is a bit softer than my usual crisp and bright white cardstock, and it coordinates better with the creamy white watercolor paper. The subtle debossed texture is the perfect background for the dainty watercolored flowers!

I popped up the watercolored floral frame using some Instant Dimension Foam Tape, then added a greeting from the Sentimental Florals set, which I heat embossed using gold embossing powder and matted on a slightly larger strip of metallic gold cardstock. The final touch was to add a few coordinating matte gold pearls for extra texture and shine!

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 $50 gift certificate to 2 lucky winners and a $25 gift certificate to 8 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by 06/09/2022 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 10 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on 06/11/2022.

Your next stop is Vicky Papaioannou. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Pinkfresh Studio May 2022 Stamp and Die Release Hop + Giveaway!

Good morning! Today is the Pinkfresh Studio May 2022 Stamp and Die release, and we have a fabulous blog hop to inspire you with all of these amazing new goodies! You can see the full link list down at the bottom of this post in case you get lost. This release is full of all of the beautiful, innovative products that you’ve come to associate with Pinkfresh Studio, and I have two projects to share with you today, so let’s get started with the details!

I seem to always gravitate towards pink, coral, or plum these days, so I thought it would be fun to really switch it up and do some gorgeous cool tones with periwinkle blue, lilac, and a few pops of pink. Both of my cards feature the stunning new Stained Glass cover plate die, which is a perfect background for the gorgeous new floral sets: Painted Daisies and Grant Yourself Grace!

For the Painted Daisies project, I began by stamping the main image onto some watercolor paper using no-line coloring ink. I then used my Sennelier watercolors to add lots of cool lilac, periwinkle, and jade, with a few pops of bright fuchsia to add extra interest. Once I’d finished watercoloring, I die cut the image using the coordinating die.

I trimmed down a periwinkle blue A2 card base, then die cut the stunning new Stained Glass cover plate die from some holographic blue cardstock. The gorgeous holographic cardstock picks up the beautiful variety of colors in the painting, but also is tone-on-tone enough to create subtle texture for the background, allowing the flowers to be the star of the show.

I arranged the flower bouquet in the corner of the card, trimming off the excess and arranging the leftovers to create a cascade down the card front. I popped all of the pieces up using foam adhesive, then added a greeting from Modern Sentiments, heat embossed in white on some more periwinkle cardstock and die cut with the coordinating (one piece!) die. The final touch was to add a few Sapphire jewels!

My second project features the same color palette, this time focusing on the gorgeous individual flowers from the Grant Yourself Grace product suite. I stamped the outline stamps for Grant Yourself Grace on some white cardstock using Stargazer ink, a bit more subtle than typical black ink, then used the Grant Yourself Grace Stencils with Sapphire, Blue Jay, and Slumber inks for the roses, Candy Violet and Lavender for the pops of lilac, and Meadow and Emerald City for the greenery. I die cut all of the finished stenciled images with the coordinating one-piece die (love how convenient that is! So clever!) and turned to my card base.

For the card base, I again die cut the fantastic Stained Glass cover plate die from some periwinkle cardstock and layered it over a full size A2 periwinkle card base. This tone-on-tone texture is absolutely marvelous! I had reserved the negative die cuts from my holographic blue Stained Glass die cut from the previous card, so I adhered those in some of the spaces to help add even more subtle, but gorgeous, interest to the background.

Once I’d finished creating the different components to the card front, I began to assemble the card. I die cut a circle from some more periwinkle cardstock, then began to arrange the roses around it as a ground for my flowers. I adhered the circle and flowers using foam adhesive, then added a greeting (leftover from the previous card) from Modern Sentiments with another layer of foam adhesive, giving it a double layer of foam adhesive in total to help it really stand out. Some more Sapphire gems help bring out those iridescent blue foil accents on the die cut background!

Well, that’s all for my projects today. Pinkfresh is hosting a giveaway to celebrate their new release! They will be giving away the full release on the Pinkfresh blog & YouTube channel. They also will be giving away a total of TEN $25  gift cards along the hop. The winners will be selected from the comments. The more comments you leave along the hop, the more chances you have to win! Winners will be announced on June 3, 2022 on our GIVEAWAY PAGE. Winners must check that page & claim your prize within 2 weeks.

The full hop list is included below, and you can check out the full May 2022 Release HERE. Thanks so much for reading, and happy hopping!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

New Video: Adding “Iridescent” Details to your No-Line Watercoloring!

Hi there! I am up on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel today with this video featuring my new Magnolia stamps and some “iridescent” watercoloring. Take a peek at the video here on my blog or watch HERE on YouTube to see how I created this iridescent look!

If you can’t watch the video, I’ll give a quick rundown of how I created this pretty card!

When I’ve got all of the stuff out for hot foiling, I will hot foil a bunch of different pieces to use at a later date for projects. I hot foiled the super versatile new Nested Hexagons hot foil frames using Aura foil, which is an absolutely stunning iridescent gold foil from Spellbinders, and I thought that the new Magnolia stamps would be perfect to do a video with some more no-line watercolor tricks, as well as showing how I create an “iridescent” look to my watercolored images!

I began by stamping the Magnolia images onto some Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper using Contour Ink from Hero Arts. I used my Karin Brushmarker watercolor markers to add some light pink color to the images, keeping the pinks and lavender shadows concentrated towards the center of the flower, making sure to keep the edges nice and crisp by keeping the wet sections separate, as well as using plenty of water to allow the pink to smoothly fade into white around the edges of the petals.

After I’d added the main color to the pink flowers, I added some very diluted washes of coral, lime green, and aqua blue Karin markers to the edges of the petals, mirroring the iridescent shine on the Nested Hexagon foiled frame. I was able to make the colors super pale and translucent by scribbling them onto my ceramic palette and adding lots of clean water to create the subtle wash. I die cut the finished watercolored images using the coordinating Magnolia Dies.

To create the background for my watercolored images, I die cut a Nested Hexagon die the same size as my foiled frame from the center of a Floral Tiles cover plate die, cut from some white cardstock. I nested the foiled frame inside of the die cut opening, then added both pieces to a solid white card base using foam adhesive. I arranged the watercolored magnolia flowers to the front of the card in a bouquet, then adhered them with more foam adhesive, creating a double layer of foam adhesive. For the greeting, I added a sentiment from Brushed Sentiments, which I heat embossed in white on some heavyweight vellum and die cut using the coordinating dies. The final touch was to add a few iridescent white gems for some sparkle!

Well, that’s all for this project! It was so fun picking up the rainbow colors in the iridescent foil in my watercoloring. It’s subtle, but I think it adds so much interest to the finished painting. Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!

Video: No Line Watercoloring with Pinkfresh Studio!

Hi there! I have a new video up on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel today featuring a few tips on how to achieve good results with your no line watercoloring. You can watch the video below or HERE on YouTube.

For this card, I wanted to create a frame for some watercolored botanicals, so I began by stamping the beautiful Botanicals and Butterflies stamp set onto some watercolor paper using no-line coloring ink. I then taped one of the large Nested Hexagons dies to the same stamped watercolor panel and used my pencil to lightly trace around the edges, avoiding drawing over the stamped images that were peeking out around the edges of the frame.

Next, I used my Holbein watercolors to add lots of color to the image and add a bright, duck egg blue background to the botanical image. This Botanicals and Butterflies stamp is heavy on the foliage and light on the flowers, which gives us time to focus our attention on how to really make those leaves look awesome! The key with any no-line watercoloring is to keep the wet sections separate. If you paint two sections that are right next to each other, they will bleed into each other and you will lose the definition of each individual image. You can speed up the drying time with your heat gun, as I have done in the video, but you can also just move around from section to section, allowing some dry time in between.

Once I had finished watercoloring, I added a Fancy Script Words Hot Foil die cut sentiment with some foam tape. I will periodically take an afternoon naptime craft session and spend the entire time hot foiling things to use in the future, especially the beautiful hot foil sentiments from Pinkfresh. I do a variety of foil colors and cardstock colors and just put them all in a bowl to pull out when I need a quick greeting! I added a few Ocean Breeze jewels for some sparkle.

Well, that’s all for today’s project! I love finding new and unexpected ways to use products. I hope you’ll try using your dies to create unique frames for your stamping projects! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Altenew March 2022 Folktales & StoriesCollection Release Blog Hop + Giveaway ($300 in total prizes)

Hi there! Welcome to the Altenew Folktales and Stories release blog hop! You should have arrived here from Hussena Calcuttawala, and your next stop is Colleen Balija. You can also check out the full hop list at the Altenew Blog. As always, there are some stunning new flowers in this release, including the Endless Florescence set that I’ve used to do some no-line watercoloring. Let’s get started with the details of my project!

I began by stamping the beautiful floral image from Endless Florescence onto some watercolor paper using no-line ink, then used the Artist’s 24 Pan Watercolor set to add some soft watercoloring to the images. I usually go bright and bold, but this time I wanted to embrace a more muted color palette. I die cut the finished watercolored piece with the coordinating die.

Next, I began work on the card base. I blended some Emerald ink on a coordinating green card base, then splattered some metallic gold watercolor on the blended area. I added a matte gold frame around the edge cut using the Fine Frames Rectangles dies and some matte gold foil cardstock.

I adhered the watercolored bouquet using some Instant Dimension Foam Tape. I also heat embossed a greeting from Endless Florescence on a rectangle of vellum cardstock using gold embossing powder. I adhered it to the card front, tucking one corner behind the die cut and using tiny dots of liquid adhesive. Finally, I added a few metallic gold gems for some 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 $50 gift certificate to 2 lucky winners and a $25 gift certificate to 8 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by 03/10/2022 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 10 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on 03/12/2022.

Your next stop on the hop is Colleen Balija. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy hopping!