Botanical Thank You

It's Julie with you again today, and I've been working on thank you cards and using watercolor mediums.  I have a card to share with you today using the fabulous Pickled Potpourri Botanical Minis and artist crayons.  I also used some digital papers from the Pickled Potpourri shop for the designer papers in the background.  

Here's a close up of the image.  This is one of 4 that comes in the Botanical Minis digital set. The sentiment is one of many beautiful ones in the Rose Sentiment Digital Set.

The papers I used were Pickled Potpourri Distressed Black & White.

Botanical Minis

Distressed Black & White papers

Rose Sentiment Digital Set

I hope this card inspires you to try the fantastic digis  and papers at Pickled Potpourris Designs.  There is truly something for everyone in the store.

Thank You Watercolor Card and Design Team Intro

Hello, fellow crafters.  I'm Julie Odil, and I'm happy to be a part of the Pickled Potpourri design team!  I love the variety of digital stamps and papers found in the Pickled Potpourri store, and the prices can't be beat!

I've been playing with watercolors lately.  I have some new watercolor crayons that I broke out for today's card.  I have a short tutorial on how I used them.

First, a view of the finished card:

I used Pickled Potpourri's Dahlia digital stamp for this card.  The 'thank you' sentiment is part of the Rose Sentiments set.

Here's how I colored the Dahlia digital stamp:

I started by adding the colors I wanted to use on a palette.  These are the colors I used on the flower petals.  I used a fairly dry brush. I tend to dip my brush, then pinch it with my fingers before using it.

Here's those 3 colors blended on one flower...

all three flowers completed:

I worked on shading each of them a bit differently.

Last, I needed to finish the stems and leaves.  I used the same technique:

Here's one more view of the finished card:

There you have it!  This Dahlia digital stamp was perfect to practice my watercoloring technique with.  It's pretty no fail, and very fun!  Check it out for yourself!

Dahlia Digital Stamp

Rose Sentiments Digital Stamp

I hope you visit this blog often to see what other great projects you'll find here. 

Flying Free

While working on cards for this month's post, I started with the idea of making cards for Mother's Day and Father's Day. After they were completed, the possibilities of using them for other events and holidays came to mind.

A butterfly strikes me as being full of possibilities.

First, I challenged myself to use digi papers. I've never ordered digi papers before. They've always seemed fantastic but did I really want to print paper? The answer now is yes! You can print off as many pieces of "paper" or "printed cardstock" as you need for a project. If you need 2 sheets, you can print two sheets. Easy peasy. For these cards, I printed on glossy paper and wowza - it's so pretty and shiny. Perfect for some fun projects. There are other times I'd definitely want a matte finish but for these I wanted a sheen.

This is Robyn. Isn't it pretty!! So happy to have this at my fingertips. And, you can have it too because it's FREE!!! Seriously - how awesome is that!!

So, back to the cards. I started with the Butterflies are Free digi from Pickled Potpourri Designs. This is a great collage image and looks awesome in watercolor, sponged for a sepia type look and also colored with copic markers as pictured below.

This is a great mother's day card because it's full of flowers and beautiful butterflies and gorgeous papers. It's an opportunity to thank Mom for being there for your support and giving you the tools to manage life so you can fly free and explore on your own. That's what triggered the thought that flying free is what happens at graduation as well. Whether you're flying on to further educational opportunities or to a career, what a great card to send someone on their way. It could also be part of a great notecard set. Definitely a versatile image. Did you notice the light pink sponging on the edges of the image - great way to soften the look. And, the card is edged too. A pretty and easy detail.

Did you notice the Robyn paper? Isn't it pretty behind the butterflies?

Speaking of the butterflies, here's a close-up of the big butterfly. I used three pinks and one salmon-y orange to color and shade. Fun stuff.

So, looking at the papers, I thought it might be fun to make a masculine card that plays with pink, lime and grey and uses some of the same copic colors as the butterfly card as well as the same green patterned paper from Robyn.

A bit of fun coloring accentuates those super fun ties for a fun Father's Day card. The ties are layered on the green paper and then on a strip of embossed cardstock. The circles are remnants from another project. I had die-cut a bunch of circles with the dies nested one inside another. It made great rings and it was great to have these extras on hand to work into this project. Two colors of twine and a little edging with green ink finished off the look.

Again, this is a masculine card that you could use for many occasions including graduation and birthday. Love the versatility of these images! The digi is named Father's Day and each of these ties are separate images so you can use them as a single, double or a triple as shown here. Fun stuff! I purposely didn't line them up or make them the same size as I wanted the whimsical feel of the images to carry through.

Here's a close-up so you can see how the rings are layered and how the two twines look up close. It's a great way to add some pizzazz without a ton of work.

That's all I've got. Looking forward to catching up with you again next month!

Have a wonderfully creative day!

Seleise, Design Team Member for Pickled Potpourri Designs