- Jun 27, 2017

Iced Mocha anyone?

STAMPlorations free digi Coffee & Dog Roses

Hi everyone, today I have my third and last card for the awesome Summer Coffee Lovers Blop Hop to show you all! I love to see what everyone is creating and how everybody is interpreting the summer theme.

The image that I used for today's card actually is a free digital stamp from STAMPlorations, designed by Shery Russ, you can find this image here: http://stamplorations.blogspot.nl/p/stamplorations-anything-goes-challenge.html (Coffee & Dog Roses).

I have to admit that I have never used a digital stamp before, my printer doesn’t take thicker paper and I seem to have problems with sizing the images to something controllable, I don’t even know if I printed today’s image correct. That being said, I printed this image on regular printer paper, I printed 4 images on one sheet (A4 size). Why did I print the same image 4 times?: at first it was just to don’t throw any unused paper away (I could use the same image on a different card in the future) but then I had the idea to make a layered card design (if you know me, then you know that I’m not very good at one layer cards!).

So, after printing the image(s) I had to decide what layer should go where: the flowers are in the front so I wanted those to be mostly separate, the glasses are in front of the background so that should be my second layer and the biggest layer is the background with the entire image on it. If you scroll down you can see a picture were you can see all the layers better if my explanation is not very good!

Now that I had that out of the way I started colouring: because this is just regular printer paper I figured it would be best to use my coloured pencils (worked when I was a kid, so why not now!). I used the following Faber Castell Polychromos colours: 102 / 108 / 111 / 180 / 176 / 177 / 175 /146 /157 / 112 / 165 / 231 / 232.

I also used a white Uni-Ball Signo pen to highlight certain areas in the image.

After I finished colouring the image(s) I fussy cut all the layers out: from the background piece I also cut of the black border because that part of the image didn’t appeal to me. I went around the edges with a Memento “Tuxedo Black” Dual Marker, using the broad tip to create nice sharp edges.

Because this is just regular printer paper I was afraid that putting 3D-kit directly to the paper would cause ugly spots and it would not give enough strength to the paper, so I decided to glue a piece of one millimetre thick fun foam (white) to the back of each layer, that way making the paper stronger and creating dimension. After adhering all the fun foam with regular glue I also adhered all the layers of the image together with regular glue.

I didn’t really wanted to adhere a sentiment over the coloured image but I felt I needed a sentiment nonetheless, so I looked through my stash and this “Mini Basic Banners” stamp set from Clearly Besotted complimented this digital stamp nicely. So I stamped that onto some white card stock with Memento “Espresso Truffle” and Versafine “Toffee” ink, coloured a little over it with the brown coloured pencils that I used on the main image and using my Stabilo brown (88/45) fine liner pen to create a bit more dimension. When I liked the result I used the matching die to cut the banner out and edged a little with Memento “Summer Sky” ink to soften the hard edge so that it would blend in more with the rest of the image. For the banner I also used some fun foam to create dimension and adhered that to the other image with liquid glue, slipping it in between some of the other layers.

Then I started working on the background panel: I choose a matching piece of cornflower blue card stock from my stash and die cut a rectangle piece from that using one of my Crea-Nest-Lies XXL dies, and running this rectangle piece through my Big Shot with the dotted embossing folder from the Sizzix Textured Impressions “Dots and Flowers Set”. I think you don’t really see that in the picture but I also edged this panel with Memento “Summer Sky” ink.

And because I felt this background needed a little something extra I splattered on some FineTec PearColor in “Sterling Silver” and (when the splatters were dry) adhered some gold coloured ribbon from my stash around the panel, taping it to the back.

And then it’s time to put this card together: I adhered the cornflower blue dotted panel to a white linen textured card base using liquid glue and adhering the image with the sentiment banner on top also with liquid glue.

And that’s it for today’s card!

If you’re curious, you can find some other goodies from STAMPlorations that are on my Wishlist here:

http://stamplorations.auctivacommerce.com/ViewWishlist.aspx?WishlistId=1216050