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Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

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VIDEO: Ombré Tone-On-Tone Intricate Die Cut Backgrounds for Pinkfresh Studio!

Hi friends! I have a new video over on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube Channel, and for this month’s video I wanted to work with the gorgeous new Secret Garden Die. I love using these super intricate dies to create tons of tone-on-tone texture on a background, whether it’s with colored cardstock or with ink blending! For today’s video, I blended a super saturated ombré sunset background…twice! Check out the video:

Watch the video above or HERE on YouTube!

To create this vibrant, super saturated card, I began by blending two separate A2 panels of white cardstock using Peach Fuzz, Coral Reef, Passion Fruit, and Raspberry Bliss inks. I went back over each panel an additional time to ensure super smooth blends and to saturate the cardstock as much as I could with color. Once I had finished blending both panels, I splattered one with rose gold metallic watercolors, then die cut the other using the Secret Garden Die. I also die cut another Secret Garden die cut from some plain white cardstock and layered the two die cuts together to add a little extra height to my intricate die cut without having to fuss with teeny little strips of foam tape!

For the greeting, I used one of my previously-hot foiled greetings. When I’m hot foiling, I like to hot foil several sentiments in a variety of foil colors, and for today’s card I pulled out one of the Happy Birthday Hot Foil Plate sentiments that I’d hot foiled with Rose Gold foil. I lightly blended the Coral Reef, Passion Fruit, and Raspberry Bliss inks on the foiled sentiment die cut so that all of the die cut pieces would coordinate!

After I popped up the foiled, blended greeting on the blended background, I die cut some flowers and foliage using hot pink foil and rose gold glitter cardstock and the Garden Wreath Dies. These standalone dies are great for adding tiny little floral accents to perfectly match your color scheme. Finally, I added a few Butterscotch Glitter Drops to the flower centers and scattered on the card to add another element of sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project today! Creating these super vibrant and textured tone-on-tone backgrounds is such a fun way to utilize these beautiful detailed die cuts. I hope you’ll give it a try! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

VIDEO: Using Vellum to Soften Your Background!

Hi friends! I am over on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel today with a video using two of my illustrations: It’s A New Day and Floral Focus! When I was illustrating these two sets, I actually intended for them to be paired together; you can see that the blooms and foliage coordinate! These were released awhile ago, but I haven’t found an opportunity to pair them together until now. The Floral Focus background stamp is a very detailed image, and I love pairing super detailed images with heat embossing and vellum… it reminds me of lace. I still wanted to have some soft color, so I used the coordinating Floral Focus Stencils to add some subtle color on the panel behind the embossing.

You can watch the video above or on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube Channel by clicking HERE.

I started by heat embossing the Floral Focus background stamp on an A2 panel of vellum using white embossing powder. I adore the effect that this technique has, creating an elegant, delicate, super feminine look. The coordinating Floral Focus Stencils are a super quick way to add color to the stamped image, but they also have very handy tick marks in the corners of the stencil which, when centered over an A2 card panel, allow you to create a colorful background without even having to stamp the image! I used Peach Fuzz, Coral Reef, Meadow, and Emerald City inks from Pinkfresh Studio with the stencils; you can see in the video that the stenciled panel alone would make a pretty background by itself! I wanted to soften those colors a bit, though, which is where the embossed vellum overlay comes in. It helps to make the colors more subtle without getting rid of them completely. I love the effect!

Next, it was time to do some watercoloring. You can see that I used this particular flower from the It’s A New Day stamp set for the Floral Focus background… I love having multiple options to create a coordinated look! I heat embossed the images from It’s A New Day onto some Fabriano Artistico Hot Press watercolor paper using white embossing powder to keep the embossing cohesive between the elements. I used my Karin Brushmarker Pro markers to add color to the images in coordinating shades of peach and emerald. (If you’ve been struggling with Karin markers, I share a few tips in my video on how to get good results with them!) Once I had finished watercoloring the butterfly ranunculus, a bud, and some foliage, I die cut the images with the It’s A New Day die.

Vellum can be a little tricky, because most adhesives will show through the semi-transparent paper, so before attempting to adhere the vellum panel, I first arranged my floral die cuts and a die cut sentiment created using the Wonderful Sentiments Hot Foil Plate and coordinating dies. I adhered the die cuts to the vellum panel using foam adhesive, then flipped over the panel and hid my super strong double sided tape behind the solid die cuts. I carefully placed the vellum panel over the top of the stenciled panel to make sure that the patterns lined up properly. The final touch was to add a few Bubblegum gems for some sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project today! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!

Video: No-Line Watercoloring and Faux Hand-lettered Stenciled Sentiment with Pinkfresh Studio!

Hi there! I am up on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel today with this pretty-in-purple card. I received a lot of positive feedback about the stenciled/faux watercolored sentiment from THIS post, so I thought I would show you how I created it in this month’s video! You can check it out below:

Or click HERE to see it in HD on YouTube.

In case you can’t watch the video, I will share a few of the tricks that I used to create this project!

One of my favorite things about the Pinkfresh Studio dye inks is that they are dye based, so they work beautifully for watercoloring! I used Soft Lilac ink for both the blended, stenciled sentiment from Circle Florals Stencils, as well as the outline of the You’re the Best stamped images.

To start, I simply blended the Thank You sentiment from Circle Florals Stencils onto some watercolor paper using Soft Lilac ink and one of the new Blending Brushes. Because the ink is dye based, my Daniel Smith watercolors glided over it super smoothly. I began by using my slightly-more-than-damp, clean paintbrush to add clean water directly over the top of the stenciled sentiment, then while the paper was still wet, dropped in some amethyst purple watercolor. The damp watercolor paper allowed the watercolor to bloom beautifully, creating that gorgeous, artistic watercolor look that we love so much! Tip: a paintbrush with a nice, sharp point is crucial for this technique as well as no-line watercoloring. The crisp point allows you to get a smooth, sharp edge on your images, thus allowing the definition of the original image to remain.

I die cut the finished sentiment with the Circle Florals Dies. I love that there are dies for nearly all of the sentiments included in the stamp and stencil sets! The entire suite of products works so beautifully together.

I had also stamped the delicate, simple flowers from You’re the Best, again using Soft Lilac ink on some Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper. (The Fabriano Artistico is a nice, bright white, not too creamy or yellowed, but still with great texture and movement on the watercolor.) I used the same vibrant Carbazole Violet watercolor from Daniel Smith to add beautiful purple color to the flower. The key with no-line coloring is to make sure that the wet sections remain separate so that they don’t bloom into each other and muddy your crisp edges, which will cause your image to lose its definition. I worked in three different layers, adding a base layer of purple, going in for a second layer to deepen shadows and clean up the edges of the petals (tip: long brush strokes are your friend for crisp, smooth edges), then a final layer of the same Carbazole Violet mixed with my favorite Indanthrone Blue on a few of the petals that were tucked behind each other. I made sure to allow the topmost petal to have the lightest, brightest white highlights to show that it was the top petal and closest to my light source. I die cut the finished floral swag with the coordinating dies.

I had previously hot foiled the Geo Arch hot foil plate onto some beautiful lavender cardstock using purple foil (tone-on-tone hot foil is basically my most favorite thing ever besides coloring), but it was an A2 panel and I wanted to create a mini-slimline card front (3.5″x6″). I trimmed it down to 3″x4.25″ so that it would fit nicely in the center of a mini-slimline card front, then matted with an ever-so-slightly larger piece of dark purple cardstock, which I mounted on my mini-slimline card front. I also die cut a small white Art Deco Frame. I wanted to have at least 3 elements of white on my card front: the card base, the white outline on the floral and sentiment die cuts, and now the white frame. I adhered all of the die cuts using foam adhesive for lots of dimension, then added a few Glacier gems for one last touch of shine!

Well, that’s all for my project today. We are working on the March release from Pinkfresh Studio, and it’s so beautiful! I am especially excited to have another design coming out this month… it’s one of my favorites! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Video: Adding Tons of Sparkle to your Holiday Cards!

Hi there! Today, I am over on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel with this holiday card that has so much sparkle, you might need some sunglasses to look at it! Sparkle is one of my favorite ways to differentiate my holiday cards from the cards that I make the rest of the year. If you can’t add sparkle on Christmas cards, when can you add sparkle? It just makes them so terribly festive!! Here’s the video:

Or you can click HERE to watch it on YouTube in HD.

This entire card began when I was experimenting with the new-ish Snowflakes Hot Foil Plate. I love the look of hot foiling on vellum, but I get mixed results, and I read somewhere that you could heat emboss on Hero Arts’s acetate. I thought to myself “if you can heat emboss on it, can you hot foil on it?” I feared that it would melt and ruin my plate, but it was a risk I was willing to take… and just look at the result!! I am so in love with this new-to-me technique, and I can’t wait to apply it to other projects. I hot foiled the Snowflakes Hot Foil Plate on some acetate using Speckled Prism hot foil from Spellbinders, which creates a beautiful, iridescent effect, which is particularly striking on the clear acetate!

Once I had my snowflake acetate panel, I knew that I wanted to create a snowy scene with snowflakes in various sizes, so I heat embossed the Snowflakes Background stamp on some watercolor paper using White Satin Pearl embossing powder. I taped the panel down to my watercolor board, spritzed the entire panel with some clean water using a fingertip sprayer, then used Sennelier watercolors to add some diagonal color. I started with a few stripes of blue, blended that into some minty turquoise, then created a custom purple by mixing the same blue with some bright magenta. The already-damp watercolor paper helped the colors to meld together beautifully and seamlessly. I hit the very wet panel with my heat gun and added some Winsor & Newton Iridescent Medium along the blue areas to create a sparkly, wintry, almost Aurora Borealis effect on my background. Once that had dried, I added some Payne’s Grey around the edges, pulling the color out to a nice fade using a clean damp brush, which created a halo effect around my sparkly AB background.

While my panel was drying, I created a frame using some pure white glitter cardstock and the Stitched Rectangles Essentials Dies. I used some super strong tape to adhere my clear snowflake panel to the sparkling frame. Once my watercolor panel had dried, I used some thin foam squares to adhere the framed acetate panel to my watercolored piece. I love how the foiled snowflakes look as though they’re floating on the watercolored background!

For the greeting, I heat embossed two different sentiments from the Ornaments Stamp set onto some Spellbinders Waterfall cardstock using white embossing powder. I used the Ornaments Dies to die cut the cursive greeting, which I think makes it look so incredibly clean and polished. I die cut the solid halo piece from the Jeff Alpha dies from some more Waterfall cardstock, then die cut the detail layer using the same white glitter cardstock, adhering them together with liquid adhesive. I added them to the clear snowflake panel with small dots of liquid adhesive to keep everything nice and clean, orienting them in the bottom right corner to allow the hot foiled snowflakes and watercoloring to take center stage!

Well, that’s all for this project and video! I can’t wait to try this hot foil-on-acetate technique out on more projects, and I hope you’ll try it out too. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Simon Says Stamp Dream Big Blog Hop-Day 2!

Hi there! Today, we are hopping along to celebrate the Simon Says Stamp Dream Big release! (You can check out the Day 1 blog hop HERE.) You should have arrived here from Barbara Tarayao, and your next stop is Miriam Prantner. I am extra excited about today’s hop, because I have a fun video to share using my newest stamp illustration: Magnolia Apple Blossom! You can check out the video below or click HERE to watch it on YouTube.

For this project, I wanted to create a bright, vibrant bouquet featuring my new favorite medium: gouache! I was able to experiment with pairing white gouache with liquid watercolors earlier this summer, and it was such a blast that I had to try it out with this giant Magnolia Apple Blossom bouquet.

I began by stamping the large bouquet from Magnolia Apple Blossom onto some Simon Says Stamp Midnight Green cardstock using Hero Arts Unicorn ink. The white pigment ink fades beautifully into the opaque paint and shows up perfectly against the dark cardstock background. I die cut the image with the coordinating dies. I mixed the liquid watercolors with the white gouache to create a variety of shades of opaque paint. The brighter the watercolors, the better, because the opaque white gouache will seriously dilute the color from its original vibrancy. The super thick Midnight Green cardstock worked beautifully with this thick paint; it did not warp or pill at all!

I like to mentally replace the water that I would normally use to dilute the watercolor with the white gouache. The white gouache acts to dilute the intensity and vibrancy of the watercolor, so adding more gouache will make your color lighter, more watercolor/pigment will make it brighter and more intense. I laid down the medium shade in the areas that were more shadowed, then added some more white gouache to that medium shade and painted the petals that were on the top, or curled over on themselves. As with all no-line coloring, keeping the contrast and sharp lines between the edges of each image was key in maintaining the shape.

Once my painting was complete, I used the Magnolia Branches Embossing Folder from Simon Says Stamp to emboss a mini-slimline (3.5″x6″) panel of more of the Midnight Green cardstock, which I lightly splattered with more white gouache to add a touch of artsy texture to the background. I popped up the painted die cut with foam tape, then added a sentiment strip from Magnolia Apple Blossom using a double layer of foam tape for extra height. Finally, I added a few Milk Glass jewels for some iridescent sparkle!

My second card features one of the new standalone dies from the Dream Big release: Lemon Zest. I love that these new dies feature just enough detail that you can use colored cardstock for a chunkier, more graphic effect, or you can use your favorite coloring medium to add lots of detail and shading, as I’ve done here. I began by die cutting all of the components from Lemon Zest from plain white cardstock. I used my Copic markers to add a ton of vibrant color to the images. This would be fun to do with ink pads and ink blending, too!

For the background, I wanted to add a subtle pattern, so I pulled out the Interlocking Circles Stencils. These stencils have a definite Tuscan feel to them, which I thought worked perfectly with the bright lemon die cuts! I blended Lemon Chiffon and Duckling inks to create a subtle, sunny pattern for the background.

I die cut a vellum Nested Domed Arches die to create a smooth area to ground my greeting and lemon cluster. I stamped a greeting using the Well Wishes stamps and Pine Paws-itively Saturated ink, then arranged my die cuts and sentiment over the top of my vellum arch. I added the die cuts with lots of foam adhesive, hiding the foam tape behind the solid die cuts to keep it from peeking through my transparent vellum die cut. Finally, I added a few bright yellow iridescent pearls to add a bit of shine!

My final card today might be tied with the magnolia gouache card for my favorite card from this release. As soon as I saw the new Ice Cream Scoop dies, I wanted to create a festive pastel birthday card with them featuring the Layered Confetti stencils. I began my project by die cutting all of the components for the Ice Cream Scoop die cuts three times from white cardstock. I again used my Copic markers to add lots of color to the die cuts, creating vanilla bean, strawberry, and mint chocolate chip ice creams. (Yum, right?) I adhered all of the components together using both liquid and foam adhesive to create as three dimensional a look as possible.

Next, I created a party background with coordinating ice cream shoppe colors! I combined the Layered Confetti stencils with Guava, Spring, and Goldenlocks inks, blending the stencils on a white background, then randomly blending all three colors around the edge of the card front to create a soft, almost bokeh-effect. I also layered a few Streamer Ribbons cut from white cardstock towards the top of my blended background to add an even more festive feel to the card front.

After the card base had been completed, I adhered the ice cream cones to the card front using foam adhesive. I cut the detailed “happy birthday” from the Scripty Happy Birthday die set from some white glitter cardstock and adhered it to the ice cream cones. So many different elements on this card, but I love how festive and sweet this one ended up! The different looks that you can achieve from just some plain white die cuts is absolutely amazing to me.

Well, that’s all for my projects today! Now, to celebrate the release and the blog hop, Simon Says Stamp is generously giving away a $25 shopping spree from one commenter on each stop on the hop!

To enter, simply leave a comment on each blog hop stop. The more comments you leave along the way, the more chances you have to win! The winners will be announced on the Simon Says Stamp blog on Wednesday the 27th of July. The winners can email the folks at Simon Says Stamp to claim your prize!

Simon Says Stamp is also offering a free gift with purchase! Enter code BIGHUGS at checkout to receive the sweet Scripty Big Hugs die FREE with any purchase! This promotion will expire 7/24 at 11:59 pm EDT.

Your next stop is Miriam Prantner. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy hopping!