Wild Nature Love – Mixed Media Card With My Own Handmade Stamps

Today I have something really fun to share – it’s actually a slightly belated birthday card for a friend but apart from the lateness, I really love how it turned out.  Even although it is late I still had to hold off on posting about it for obvious reasons.  Here’s the card…

This is the card that goes with the other recent gifts I made, and I wanted something special but also something reasonably quick – but what?  I also really wanted to combine this resulting card with a current challenge that required me to make my own stamps.  I didn’t have to combine them but I had made the stamps with the intention of using them on this particular card, even though I wasn’t sure what the card was going to look like or how the stamps might work out!

Even the kitty girl wasn’t sure what I was up to when I pulled out these supplies lol

I didn’t really know where I was going but I did know that I wanted some kind of plant-y thing, so the first stamp i decided to carve was this one.  I like it as it could be a tree or it could be a twiggy plant, it could have leaves or no leaves, or even flowers.  I left it open.

I also made a few more stamps, since I really got into the zone.  The first one was very time consuming, because of the design, all the others were super quick.  I made a text stamp for my nature card, a concentric frame stamp and then a spiral stamp, and a tiny flower stamp and then a very quick logo stamp

My logo stamp is far from perfect but it was done in seconds, and I stamped it inside the card, it’s quirky, it has the handmade feel, I like it 🙂

Once I had all my stamps made (or I thought I did) I started on my background.  This is a piece of Gina K card so I am using the full 8 x 11 sheet which I plan to fold in half to make my card.  The challenge is from Kraft+ and requires a kraft background, and this will fit in nicely with my nature theme.  I am using a brayer and small amounts of Paperartsy Fresco Chalk paints, to build up layers and make my background.  I want to keep it reasonably light and bright so I am trying to choose the right colours and put them in the right spots, ensuring also that you can still see the kraft background showing through in places – no point in having it if you can’t see it!

Adding the pink was just what it needed.

The paint dries very quickly but I gave it a quick blast with a hairdryer to be sure, before starting to stamp out my first stamps using dark brown ink.

After stamping the tree things, I stamped the white spirals, and then realised I needed some leaf stamps! So I quickly made two tiny leaf stamps and stamped them in green.

One stamp is a single leaf and the other is a group of three.

I added more pink using my WILD NATURE LOVE stamp – I love this one!

I add more leaves randomly across the background.

Then I added my little blue flowers but I realised that they were missing something!  I debated whether or not to leave a centre in the stamp.  I did think about this at the time of making the stamp and the reason I didn’t was so that it would be easy to add different coloured centres later.

I quickly added some using the eraser on the end of my pencil!

Unfortunately, rumour had it that delicious pencils were on the menu!  My 2B  pencil was particularly tasty!

After securing the rest of the pencils against marauding kitties, I added some splatters to my background.

I used French Roast which is a lovely dark brown, some Snowflake white, and then some of my usual Unicorn Hair metallique paint.

And that was the card basically finished.  Because of all the paint etc I didn’t use a scoreboard to make the crease, I just folded it over very carefully by hand as I didn’t want anything damaged by running a scoring tool through the paint.

Apologies for some of these photos as it was raining buckets and a bit dull which is making the colours look a lot duller than they actually were.  Of course I don’t have the card anymore as it has been posted, so this is what we have.

Oh before I forget, here’s one more photo of my stamp making supplies just ready for the next project!

I feel that this card suits my friend perfectly so I can’t wait to hear what she thinks when she sees it.

 

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and like the card.  Maybe you also like making your own marks and stamps, and if you do, please leave me a comment below.

 

 

CHALLENGES

I am entering this card in the following challenges:
Kraft+ March Challenge – DIY Stamps

Project Recipe

My own stamps!
Paperartsy Fresco Chalk paints
Versafine Clair ink
Finnabair Metallique paint gold and black liquid acrylic
Gina K cardstock
From stash: just the tools for cutting the stamps and the lino