Saturday, February 22, 2020

PDO - Love Grows Here

Happy Saturday everyone!  Have you had a chance to hop along yet with the Polka Dot Orchard Love & Friendship inspiration blog hop yet?  If you haven't, check out all of the details on my post from yesterday.

Now, let's talk about the new PDO digital stamp set I'm using today.  It's called Love Grows Here and you can get your hands on it right HERE.


It's a fabulous succulent focal image with lots of great sentiments.  There are so many possibilities!  I wanted to keep my card simple today.  To let you know it's totally ok to just color bits and pieces of a larger floral image.  Don't feel overwhelmed, I promise it will be all good!  Let's see what I created.


I kept if very simple.  I printed the heart image out onto Bristol paper.  I then used Zig Clean Color real brush markers and a water brush.  I would lay down a little bit of color where I wanted it to be the darkest and used the water brush to spread it out.  

The colors used are:

Light Green 41
Violet 80
Pale Rose 230
Turquoise Green 42
Olive Green 43
Geranium Red 29

To jazz it up I bit, I carefully went over all the colored areas with clear Wink of Stella.  I also added it to some of the larger, uncolored blooms.

I chose to use the larger font size "Hello Friend" and printed it out onto white cardstock.  I added it to a black piece of cardstock and trimmed it down to have a very narrow border.  I went ahead and fussy cut out the flower shape and liberally added foam tape to the back.  I adhered it to the dark gray card base.  Then I used liquid glue in the middle of the sentiment strip and foam tape on the ends.  This way it's flush over the heart but will have support where it hangs over.  And that finishes up my card for today.

Large floral images don't have to be intimidating.  Color a little or color a lot.  It's totally up to you!

Toodles!
~Kristina




Friday, February 21, 2020

Love & Friendship Inspiration Blog Hop


Valentine’s Day may be over and done for this year, but Polka Dot Orchard is still celebrating with our Love & Friendship Inspiration Blog Hop. The creative team has amazing creations to share with you featuring some of our newest releases! We have two $10 gift cards for two lucky winners chosen randomly from the comments. You have until February 24th, 11:59pm EST to leave a comment on each of the blogs, including the Polka Dot Orchard blog letting us know that you completed the hop. We will announce the lucky winners on February 26th on the Polka Dot Orchard blog.

Hiya!  I'm SUPER excited to be participating in the Polka Dot Orchard Love & Friendship blog hop!  Polka Dot Orchard is celebrating a huge release of 20 new digital stamp sets.  Yes, 20!!  You can find all of them right now in the Polka Dot Orchard shop!

For my project today I am using the One Stellar Friend set.  Here's a quick look at the set.


So let's look at my card and then talk about all the details.


This set just needed to have a galaxy background.  Who am I to argue!  I cut a piece of watercolor paper down to A2 size.  Then I got inky with my Distress Oxide inks and lots of shimmery water.  The colors I used were Wild Honey, Seedless Preserves, Peacock Feathers, Salty Ocean and Black Soot.  I'm sure you have seen other tutorials and videos on how to create these backgrounds so I won't go into all the details.  My secret to this one was using a shimmer spray to help the colors blend together.  I tried to capture all the shimmer in this picture.


Once I had dried it for the last time, I went back and splattered it with clean water and dabbed it up.  Then I followed it up with splatters of white paint.  I set it aside to work on the next part...the moon!

Of course a galaxy card needs a moon.  I cut a 3 1/2 circle out of watercolor paper.  I used Hickory Smoke distress ink for the gray bits and then went over the open areas with Antique Linen distress ink.  I found it easiest to smoosh my ink onto a block, spritzed with water and then use a paint brush to apply the color.



I laid the moon aside so I could get to the coloring of the girl.  I printed her out onto a Copic friendly cardstock and got busy with the coloring.


Helmet: N01, N00 and 0
Skin: E31, E30 and R20
Yellow: Y17, 15, 11
Teal: BG49, 45
Hair: E29, 27, 25, 23

Once I was done with the coloring, I added glossy accents over the entire helmet piece.  Make sure you let this dry completely before putting your card together!

Let's build a card!

I added the galaxy panel to a top fold A2 card base.  Next I added the moon in the bottom right corner.  I made sure the moon hung over the edge of the card and I just flipped it over and cut the excess off.  I put foam tape on the back of the girl and added her right on top of the moon.  I printed the sentiment out on the same paper I used for the girl image.  I cut it down into a strip and glued it on top of a purple strip just slightly larger then the sentiment.  I glued the entire strip down on the card.  One out of this world card complete!

Make sure you stop by all of the design team member pages!

Just click on the names below to take you to the other blogs.

Kristina <--- you are here


See you again soon!
~Kristina



Tuesday, February 11, 2020

PDO - Valentine's Day tags

Welcome back to my little crafty corner of the world!  Polka Dot Orchard has just had a HUGE release of brand new digital stamps in their store.   Click HERE to check out all the new goodies.  Today I am using Love and a Fabulous Cupcake illustrated by Crystal O. Minkler and Love Grows Here illustrated by Kimberly Wiener.

I cut two tags 2 3/4" x 5" out of a pale pink cardstock.  Next I measured the space available to put the digital stamp.  I had drawn out a quick sketch so I had some idea what I wanted to do.  Next I reduced the size of the cupcake and printed it out on Neenah Solar White 80lb cardstock.  I set this aside for the moment and went to work on the background.


I had two different ideas for the background and I just couldn't decide.  So I did both!  I used red ink with a brush and stencil to create the one on the left.  For the one on the right, I used the same stencil but used Nuvo Glimmer Paste in Raspberry Rhodolite instead.  I laid them both asided to air dry.

Now back to the cupcake stamp.  Like the backgrounds, I couldn't decide on which medium to use.  I thought I would use colored pencils to create a softer look to go with the tag on the left.


I used Gamsol and Prismacolor pencils.  The colors used were: 
Wrapper - PC947 and PC1082. 
Frosting - PC992, PC995 and PC105. 
The cherry/heart - PC1030 and PC925.

For the glimmer paste tag I used Copic markers.  I love the bold colors you can get with them.


Colors used:
Wrapper - T7, BG78, BF75 and BG72.
Frosting - W5, W3, W1, W0 and 0.
Heart/cherry - R59, R37 and R32.

I fussy cut them both out with scissors and added some detail with white gel pen.

While the gel pen dried, I got back to creating the sentiment.  Like I said at the beginning of the post, the sentiment is from the Love Grows Here set.  I wanted the tag backgrounds to shine through so I thought printing the sentiments onto vellum would be perfect.  And it was!  I trimmed them down to thin strips and wrapped them around to the back of the tag.  Then I used a strong adhesive to keep the strips in place on the back.

I cut out pieces of foam tape to add to the back of the cupcake.  Even a tiny little piece for the cherry stem!  Peeled of the backer pieces and added them to the tags.  I searched through my ribbon stash and found ribbons to work with both of the tags.  And that's all there is!

Here is a side-by-side comparison.  Can you pick a favorite?  I can't!



Remember, head on over to the Polka Dot Orchard shop to check out the latest and greatest!

Thanks for stopping by!
~Kristina