Fabulous Finds Friday — Flesh Tones

Do you ever struggle with getting flesh tones right on your stamped people? (Or animals?!)

Prima’s Hair & Skin Tone watercolor pencils by Julie Nutting makes it easy — perfect for coloring in her big dolls!

Here’s a look at just the skin parts:

(And how about that great Julia Nutting stamp? This pretty lady, Audrey, is from Julia’s series.

These stamps are not small:

But they are so much fun! In another post, I’ll show how I use these “dolls” in different ways.

Thanks for looking! (Yes, this was supposed to be posted Friday. Sigh.)

Fabulous Finds Friday — Scrumptious Succulents

I have had a thing for succulents for a long time so when I found this stamp and die set from Simon Says I had to have it!

I’ve only started to play, but check out these cute tags:

The stamps and dies — designed by the talented Sandy Allnock — are so dang clever. You can stamp the succulent and the containers together or separately, and die cut them the same way. (Sandy has a great tutorial here showing how to do this.)

I used a variety of tools to make these tags, including a corner rounder and the tag and ticket punch from Tonic Studios, which creates the straight corner as well as the ticket punch.

I colored them all with watercolor pencils then used my water brush to blend the colors. When they were dry, I added some dots and trim using Faber-Castell’s white PITT artist pen.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Cat’s Meow

In my last post I featured a cute dog-reading-a-newspaper stamp from Stampendous! We gotta give the cats some love, too, right?

Such as this amusing image, also from Stampendous! (there’s a dog version as well.)

This is a simple card — basic stamping, layering, light coloring. The background was made by running white cardstock through a Spellbinders M-Bossabilities embossing folder. The image was lightly colored using watercolor pencils, lightly blended.

Thanks for stopping by!

Dog-gone it!

I don’t use a lot of animal images in my card making, but this dog-reading-a-newspaper stamp from Stampendous! caught my eye for various reasons — first, as a former news reporter, I love anything newspaper related, and second … well, do you SEE the expression in that dog’s eyes? Credit Stampendous! owner Fran Seiford for the wonderful artwork. Perfect for a Fabulous Finds Friday stamp pick!

The image was stamped in Ranger’s Wendy Vecchi’s Archival Potting Soil and colored with watercolor pencils, then blended lightly. The background paper and the darling center piece die cut (stitched journaling die) are from Lawn Fawn.

In the next card, I finally found something to use on this stenciled background I made a while back (featured here and here.)

Same process. The sentiment is from Hero Arts. Have a great weekend!

Ah, the Sweet Smell of Scraps

I was in a groove, going through my hoarded scrapbook paper, using it up and having fun in the process.
First, I randomly covered card fronts with leftover paper:

(the blue/pink combos are from Hot Off The Press.)

Then I added images and embellishments:

(typewriter by Hero Arts; Stampin’ Up punch; imaginisce hot-fix metallic dots)

Here’s a close-up of the embellies:

And another card:

(Sillyscape by Hero Arts; clouds dies by My Favorite Things.)

Card for a teen:

How fun is the above image from American Art Stamp? The speech bubble is a Marvy punch; the “wheeee” is hand written. The images were colored with watercolor pencils.

Thanks for stopping by! I’ll be showing some fun embellishments on Friday!