Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

rose

Stenciled Yellow Roses to Say Thinking of You with New Simon Says Stamp!

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

Hi friends! I am back with another project featuring some fabulous new products from the latest You Are My Favorite Release. My Papa really loved yellow roses, so as soon as I saw the gorgeous Elegant Rose Stencil, I knew that I had to create an homage to my Papa. Simon Says Stamp also offers some utterly luscious shades of yellow and green inks in their Pawsitively Saturated Ink line, so I knew that this card would come together lickety-split. Let’s get started with the details!

*I have gathered links to all of the products used at the bottom of the post for your convenience, using affiliate links. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*

To begin, I used the Pawsitively Perfect Craft Tacky Mat to hold my white cardstock panel securely in place, then blended each layer of the Elegant Rose Stencil using the inks from Pawsitively Saturated Inks: Cabbage, Kale, Artichoke (Trio 21) and Butter, Zest, Honey (Trio 27). These muted shades of green and yellow worked superbly with the gorgeous rose image. The layers of this Elegant Rose Stencil were super simple to line up, as well as providing plenty of space to do some more intricate ink blending on the leaves to create color variation and interest! After I had finished blending the gorgeous rose, I used blending brushes to blend Butter, Kale, and Artichoke inks around the edge of the card front, creating a stunning halo around the rose.

After creating the card base, I wanted to add some fun shimmering accents to the card front to make it ethereal and almost like the rose was in a fairy garden. I used some shimmering handmade watercolor paint to splatter the edges of the card front, then die cut a pearlescent yellow/pale gold frame using the A2 Nesting Frames dies and adhered it around the edges of the card front with liquid adhesive.

For the greeting, I used one of the exquisite sentiment options from the equally-exquisite Flowering Frame set. This set features not only a variety of poignant and purposeful sentiments, but also some gorgeous floral images. I heat embossed the “thinking of you” onto some Midnight Green cardstock using white pigment ink and Iridescent Blue embossing powder, then die cut the sentiment with its coordinating dies. I also die cut one of the new Petal Tipped Labels from some Simon Says Stamp Vellum, trimming off the edge with my guillotine trimmer so that the label nestled flush against the frame. I popped up the greeting die cut with foam adhesive on the vellum label, then flipped both pieces over and added some liquid adhesive behind the solid die cut sentiment. I adhered the vellum label to the card front, then added a few more shimmering accents with some Butter Pawsitively Dazzling Gems and a bow created with Simon Says Stamp Iridescent White Cord.

Well, that’s all for my project today! Don’t forget: the Simon Says Stamp You Are My Favorite Blog Hop is in full swing. You can check out my blog hop post HERE, and then check out the incredible inspiration from Day 2 HERE on the Simon Says Stamp Blog! Oodles of inspiration and fabulous prizes, as well as a marvelous freebie, are up for grabs. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Altenew Quiet Reflections Stamp and Die Release Blog Hop+Giveaway!

Hi there! I’m excited to be helping Altenew celebrate their December 2020 Quiet Reflections Stamp and Die release as a stop on the blog hop! You should have arrived here from Norine Borys, and your next stop is Amanda Baldwin. I have two cards featuring the beautiful new Tranquility Rose and You Are Beautiful stamp sets, which are super fun to color, so let’s get started with the details!

For this first card featuring Tranquility Rose, I put the beautiful colors in the Altenew Artists’ 24 Pan Watercolor set to use! These beautiful watercolors are a dream to work with and are super affordable. Definitely a must-have. I began by heat embossing the images from Tranquility Rose using silver embossing powder onto Altenew watercolor paper, then used the Altenew Artists’ 24 Pan Watercolor to add color in lovely cool shades of lavender, blue, and mint.

Once the images were dried, I used the coordinating dies to cut everything out. I also taped a 3.25×8.25 panel of watercolor paper to my watercolor board, then used the Artists’ 24 Pan Watercolor to create a lovely, subtle ombre for the background. I allowed it to dry while still taped to my watercolor board (helps to reduce warping!), then once dry, adhered it to a 3.5×8.5″ panel of silvery shimmer cardstock.

I arranged all of the floral die cuts on the slimline card base to create a long, cascading swag down the front, adhering them with both liquid and foam adhesives. The final touch was some iridescent gems for sparkle!

For my second project, I focused on the You Are Beautiful stamps and dies. These beautiful hibiscus blooms are absolutely massive and so much fun to color. I stamped them using Fadeout Ink on some Copic-friendly white cardstock, then used my brightest, most tropical-feeling Copic markers to add lots of vibrant color.

I die cut the colored images using the coordinating dies and arranged them on a plain white A2 card base. While they were still in their arrangement, I picked the die cuts up using Press’n’Seal and added foam adhesive to the back. Before replacing the die cuts on the card base, I used a black pen from the Fineliner Pen Set and my T-square to create a black frame around the edge, then placed the blooms back on the card front.

I stamped a greeting from the You Are Beautiful using Obsidian Black ink onto a strip of white cardstock, then adhered it to the floral card front. Finally, I added some black gems to help make the black frame and sentiment pop even more.

Well, that’s all for my projects today! Now for some fun giveaway information:

$300 in total prizes! To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $40 gift certificate to 3 lucky winners and a $20 gift certificate to 9 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by 12/09/2020 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 12 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on 12/11/2020.

Your next stop is Amanda Baldwin. You can also start at the Altenew Card Blog to get the full hop list! Thanks so much for stopping by, and happy hopping!

Giant Blooms and a New Exploring with Emily Video!

Hi there! Today, I’m sharing the latest installment of the Exploring with Emily series with Ellen Hutson. This month, I am working with the new Hero Hues Reactive Inks. These inks debuted during the Hero Arts 45th Anniversary catalog release, and they are absolutely fantastic. They blend beautifully, and in the video I show how easily and perfectly they work as watercolors. You can watch it below or here on the Ellen Hutson YouTube channel:

The stamp used in the video is from a new-to-me stamp company: Colorado Craft Company. They have a beautiful group of Big and Bold stamps that feature some utterly massive blooms: Hydrangea, Peony, and Rose (that I used in the video above). I created two more watercolored projects using the Hydrangea and Peony stamps and my Daniel Smith watercolors.

For my first project, I used the beautiful Get Well Hydrangea stamp, first stamping it with Versafine Onyx ink and heat embossing it with White Satin Pearl embossing powder on some Arches Cold Press watercolor paper. The combination of the black embossing powder and the pearlescent powder creates a pretty pearlescent charcoal!

I wanted to create a light pink, antiqued hydrangea, one with many different highlights and lowlights and variations in color, as real hydrangeas do. I tend to saturate images with color to start, adding layer after layer of color until the light image that I’d envisioned in my head is no more. In order to keep the hydrangea light, I began by saturating the area around the flower with bright blue and turquoise watercolors. I found that the contrast of the vibrant background helped to keep my hand light on the flowers themselves. I tried to add lots of variations of color, keeping the petals on the top the lightest with very diluted color, the petals beneath quite dark with very concentrated color, and adding a few touches of very pale yellow to indicate sunshine hitting the bloom

After I’d finished watercoloring the bloom, I needed to add a sentiment, but didn’t want to cover up too much of my meticulously-watercolored panel. My favorite way to add subtle sentiments is to heat emboss a greeting on a piece of heavyweight vellum, which allows the background to still shine through, though slightly muted. I white embossed the greeting from Get Well Hydrangea on a rectangle of heavyweight vellum, then added tiny dots of adhesive behind the embossing to hide the adhesive and not ruin the overall look of the vellum.

For my second project, I focused on the gorgeous, massive peony, but I wanted to do some no-line watercoloring. I began by stamping the image Arches Cold Press using Ink On 3’s Fadeout Ink and my Misti.

I can never get enough pink peonies, so I watercolored the gorgeous flower using my Daniel Smith watercolors in shades of pink, lavender, adding some shadows of deep purple and highlights of pale yellow, again to add variation where the sunlight would hit the petals.

I used the same idea for the greeting as I did for the previous project; I silver embossed the sentiment from Missing You Peony on a strip of vellum, then hid tiny dots of liquid adhesive on the back of the embossed sentiment strip. An effective way to add a subtle greeting to your detailed card front, no?

Well, that’s all for me today! I hope you’ve enjoyed my first explorations into these beautiful blooms from Colorado Craft Company. They have many darling stamps, including some huge stamps of various sweets that I’m dying to play with. I hope you’ll check them out! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!