House of Flowers by Sharon Harnist

I'm loving #WorldWatercolorMonth and Pink Ink's beautiful stamps are a colorist's dream to work with -- The images are always so highly detailed and a pleasure to color! Today's images of choice are some beautiful new florals: To begin, I stamped the adorable new House of Flowers with Memento Tuxedo Black ink in the center of my watercolor paper, then stamped the equally as cute Pretty Petals flower around the edges of the panel, to create a frame. I used Memento Tuxedo Black ink, knowing it works well with Copic ink. Did you know you can "watercolor" with your Copic Various Ink Refills? Yes! It is quite simple -- Just squeeze a little of the refill ink into a palette, fill a waterbrush with Copic Colorless Blender, then pick up your desired Various Ink color with the brush and paint away!  Here are the Copic Various Ink colors I used (click on any photo, for a larger view): 1. V15, 2. RV17, 3. R24, 4. YR04: On some of the flower petals, I did a couple of coats of ink to deepen the color, allowing the first coat to dry before adding more color. I also was able to achieve some shading this way, too. 5. Y15, 6. YG03 for outer parts of leaves. I didn't have a good darker Various Ink Refill to compliment YG03, so I just used a G05 Copic Sketch Marker to color the centers of the leaves: 7.E21 and E23 for the house and chimney. 8. B0000 was used to lightly color wash the sky. Very lightened (with Copic Colorless Blender) YG03 was washed below the sky, to create grass. To finish the card, I die cut the watercolored panel with a large stitched frame, then mounted the piece onto a Lemon Meringue card base. Thanks for joining me today!  ~ Sharon Pink Ink products used, available online through Ellen Hutson LLC: Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, House of Flowers Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, Pretty Petals Or check Pink Ink's website to find a local store near you that carries our stamps, or to order wholesale.

Pretty Petals stamp: one stamp many ways with May Flaum

07/05/2017

It's so easy to forget: we can do things more than one way! Hello there - May Flaum here and today I'm featuring the Pink Ink stamp "Pretty Petals" - and several ideas on how to use this stamp on your projects.

#1 is the obvious: stamp it onto paper and color as seen here.

#2 is an often forgotten favorite: stamp with versamark or watermark ink on watercolor paper. Then watercolor - or in my case splash on some distress ink - and see what happens. Versamark usually ends up darkening the color(s) of watercolor but note this technique isn't super reliable and results vary depending on the paper used too. So use it as a "messy" background works best.

#3: stamp with dye ink, then coat in clear embossing powder and seal. Why do this? It seals in the color. So for example with distress ink it means that flower I stamped stays sharp no matter what else I do.

#4: Stamp with distress ink + water, mist, or otherwise some kind of "sloppy" type of image. It makes a watered out faded image and can accent projects beautifully.

Four ways on two cards - and these ideas could all work on other projects as well. Here is my video run through (it's short!) on YouTube.

The stamp I featured is "pretty petals" by Pink Ink- I just love the size and the awesome details on this stamp. I also used the do what you love stamp for my sentiment.

When it comes to stamping I love that it can be as simple as black ink on paper to layered techniques that take a lot of time - and I love that you can get countless looks from just one stamp.

I hope you've enjoyed this quick video and these card projects that I've shared with you today.