Doodle Heart Card with Suzi

Good Day All, Today It's my pleasure to share with you my latest creation using a mix of Brusho Crystal Colour Powders and Acrylic Inks.  It's February at last, and I'm still feeling the Love, so I've created a card featuring lots of lovely Hearts.

Here's my finished card;

Here's how I created it;

The first thing I did was to created my background paper.  I had a piece of paper that I'd used to soak up some excess Prussian Blue and Turquoise Brusho Crystal Colour Powders from a previous project, so I took that and added a little more texture to it with some bubble wrap and watered down Ultramarine Acrylic Ink ( I add a little too much water, so the pattern merged).  Once dry I added some Gold Metallic Acrylic Ink with a dip pen, then blended it out with some water.  Finally to add definition I used a really small nibbed dip pen and Black Acrylic Ink to outline some of my pattern and add a border to the piece of paper.

Next it was time to create my focal images.  I had some Hearts that I'd created with Brusho Crystal Colour Powders and a Large and Small Heart Poly Plate(from Crafty Roo Designs), leftover from a previous project, so I decided to add some doodling to them with Acrylic Inks.  I added doodles with a coordinating Acrylic Ink, then more details with Gold Metallic Acrylic Ink and finally extra fine doodles with Black Acrylic Ink.

To Make my card I took a sheet of A4 White Card and scored it in half, I then added my background, and arranged my Hearts in a pattern I liked.

You can see some of my doodling in the close up, along with the gorgeous shimmer and shine you get from the Gold Acrylic Ink.

This was such a relaxing card to make, after all most of my elements were leftover from previous projects, so I spent the majority of the time on this project adding doodling, which was lots of fun.

You could add the doodling with a mixture of Brusho Crystal Colour Powders and water, but they would blend into your Brusho background; the joy of the Acrylic Ink is it doesn't bleed into the Brusho, and dried nice and crisp with a slight shine, whereas the Brushos dry with more of a matte finish.

I used a Bamboo Dip Pen to do most of the doodling, If you've not tried a Dip Pen I highly recommend it, especially if you find the idea of using inks with a brush scary, you have a lot more control of a Dip Pen. 

I hope you've enjoyed reading how I created my project.  Thanks You for Visiting with Us Today.

Bye for Now

Suzi

xxx

Painted & Stitched Heart Cards

Well, January has seemed to fly by, and it will be February next week!
So it is time to be thinking about showing appreciation to those we care about. 

So whether you are into celebrating Galentines Day on the 13th or Valentine's Day on 14th February here is a painted and stitched idea!

I took a piece of well-washed cotton cloth (a piece of sheet to be honest) and stretched it on an old wooden frame. Three-Point pins are great for stretching the fabric to a frame, not causing tears, and come with a handy tool for removing them too, but you can use drawing pins.

I then had a play with three Markel Oil Sticks:  purple, light gold, and red. These look good on their own but will resist added paint too. They do sink into the cloth so don't rub off as you are stitching later.

I then used some batik dye powder I had mixed up in jam jars.
These are handy concentrated cold water fabric dyes and I mix up lots of different colours just from the three primary colours. You just dilute them to get pastel shades!
For an average jam jar, I dissolve 30g of table salt in a little hot water and then make it up to 250ml with cold water. You then add 5g (1 level tablespoon) of Batik Dye fixer powder and 1g (a quarter of a teaspoon) of the dye powder.

I painted these on the fabric making several hearts.

You can see here how I let the paints bleed as I was wanting a shabby-chic effect.

When the paint dries sandwich two layers of fabric with some wadding in the middle. 
You can secure this with a couple of pins but I used an embroidery hoop.

I used a couple of different embroidery thread colour and used running stitch around my painted lines.

I then trimmed the hearts and used double-sided tape to secure them to the front of cards. I'm not sure whether to leave them simple like this or whether to add a sentiment cut from the ribbon. What do you think? (Sometimes crafting on your own can seem lonely when you want another opinion, but here the online crafting community can be wonderful, so please do tell me in the comments what you think)

These heart cards also seem like a good idea for weddings and even thank you cards too!

I did make a heart-shaped padded shape too but haven't found the safe place I put my lavender to fill it with yet. I'll keep looking and will hopefully find it before February. It's nice to show yourself some love too and so I plan to put the scented heart in my wardrobe.

Thinking of You with Brusho's and Aztec Paints

Hello Colourcraft friends.  Gail here.  Happy New Year to you all from me.  Now Christmas is over we start looking forward and soon the season of hearts and flowers will be with us.   Today I want to share a hearty card I made using Scarlet Brusho Powder, Copper Aztec paint and some die cuts.

I've used Poppystamps Perched Fairy and the Heart Swoosh die, which I thought would give her the perfect place to perch.

I started by making the background panel.  I cut a heart shape from an old magazine.   The glossy paper survives getting wet a bit better, and I was throwing it away anyway, so it seemed ideal.  I placed the paper heart in the center of my white card, spritzed with water and sprinkled Scarlet Brusho powder.  Then I removed the heart mask.  Ta dah!!!  Heart shaped white space.

I took some glossy card and a small amount of Copper Aztec paint on a wide brush and dry brushed the paint onto the paper.  I wanted a sort of metallic woodgrain effect.

I used a stitch die to cut my Brusho panel and mounted on a red base card.  I cut the Heart Swoosh die from the Copper Aztec painted card, and then cut the fairy from black card.  I decided not to cut her wings, so she's just a girl, sitting on a swoosh, thinking of you.

Thanks for visiting today.  Leave me a comment so I know you dropped by.  Don't forget to share your makes using Colourcraft products in the Create with Colourcraft fb group. 

"Pouring" your heart out- a pouring medium project

February is just around the corner, which means Valentine's Day is! What better way to show someone you love them then to make them a piece of art, and why not "pour" out your feelings using Brusho Flow Medium and testing out some pouring techniques.

                                   

 This week I decided to try two different pouring methods.

First I made a template out of freezer paper which I ironed onto my canvases. Then I mixed my colors. I mixed normal white acrylic paint with the medium in one cup, and then added Brushos in Rose Red, Sunburst Yellow and Purple in my other cups. I stirred well and then added water until I got the consistency I wanted.

My first canvas I decided to do what is called a "balloon pour". First I poured some of the white inside of my masked area and spread it out. Then I dropped and swirled the other colors.

I didn't find my balloons so I took some bubble wrap which I pushed into these areas of paint. I kept dripping paint and then pushing the bubble wrap into it. It started to look like this:

I wanted to have a bit stronger colors, so I sprinkled more of the Brushos into the colored areas and blew a bit with a straw.

 This is what it looked like when I took the freezer paper off. It had bled a little under my mask, but that was ok! I sponge painted around it in Aztec Eco Metallic Gold paint and then drew in flowers with a paint pen.

For my second heart, I decided to do a flip cup. You can read more about that technique and even see a video on my earlier blog on pouring (link later in this blog).
I did the same thing with the mask, then I made my flip cup by adding the Brusho mixed colors to what was left in my white cup. I then flipped it onto the canvas, and tilted to spread around the colors.

 After this one dried, I removed the mask, used a stencil to add some DesignIT for texture and then painted the background with a rose gold color I mixed from Aztec Eko Metallic Bronze and Silver.

 Tada! I think they both look quite cool. I have to warn you though- pouring is totally addictive. I am really pleased with the depth of color I got using the Brusho medium plus Brushos! And it didn't take much of the pigment to get a lot of color. The medium is sticker than others I have used, but just adding a bit of water makes it perfect for these techniques.
Here they are again! Give it a go!

If you want to see more pouring techniques with the Brusho medium- check out another blog post I did here.
And the link for the pouring medium again is here: Brusho Flow Medium

Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set

Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint

Sunprinted Heart Mini Quilts

Happy New Year everyone! Here is hoping that 2019 brings love and light and loads of creativity to you all!

My first project for 2019 are sunprinted mini quilts featuring hearts!

I've printed these hearts on both the pretreated fabric as well as the pretreated paper.

Sunprinting or cyanotypes are a direct photographic process. You place objects on the pretreated product and then place it in sunlight or under a UV lamp. Where the light is blocked, the chemicals will rinse out, leaving white (or whatever color the original paper or fabric was) where the light reaches develops into a lovely cyan blue color. 

I started off by creating my heart with buttons or lace- adding other charms, or a key or even stickers. As I live in Sweden, and it is January! Sun is in great demand, so I placed my items under a UV lamp (aka black light). These are used for lighting effects at discos as well as helping plants grow! 

I let these sit in the light for a good 10-15 minutes. Removed my objects and rinsed in cold water.

And that's it! It's THAT SIMPLE! :) 

For the prints I did on fabric, I added a thin wadding and backing fabric, freehand quilting and even sewed on one of the buttons I had used for my original "print".

There are so many cool ideas you can explore with this technique and they make an easy, fun and unusual valentine! 

If you want to learn some other ways to use these pre-treated sunprinting products- check out my previous blog post!

Happy creating! And see you in a couple of weeks!