Balloon Mixed Media Gift Bag *** Blue Fern Studios ***

Today I'm sharing my second Blue Fern Studios project for the month of June, which was featured on the Blue Fern Studios Blog yesterday.

With Father's Day just around the corner, I set out to make a masculine gift bag, though in the end it turned out a little too colourful to be truly masculine, but I love it! It might get repurposed as a teacher's gift bag.

I combined Blue Fern Garden and Ombre Dream papers for this one; they work so well together! After I built my base layers, I added strips and squares I cut from scrap pieces and the cut-away strips at the bottom of the papers, and added random colour to the sides of all of these using Gelatos.

I then added stencilling, stamping and splattering to the background along with some sewing thread.

I coloured the Grand Balloon Chippy with several different colours of Silks acrylic, mixed with Primary Elements, and Shimmerz Shimmerz paints, layering them on until I was happy with the effect then adding some gesso to help to tie the piece in with the background. 

See the wonderful texture from the acrylic paint? Some metal pieces provided nice finishing touches to the balloon.

 Blue Fern Studios Products Used:

 - Blue Fern Garden: Signature, Timeless, Parlour

- Ombre Dreams: Susan's Dream

- Blue Fern Chipboard: Grand Balloon

Thank you for your visit today! Join me tomorrow for my third Blue Fern Studios project for the month.

The Gift *** Blue Fern Studios ***

I'm up on the Blue Fern Studios blog today sharing 3 projects for June. Here is the first of these projects, a mixed media, very dimensional layout featuring a photo collage of some darling photos of Colby sharing apples with his Babba. (Forget that the apples were meant for the horses - he didn't know that!)

I've mentioned before how much I love the thickness of these papers (and if you haven't had a chance to pick up some Ombre Dreams paper, they are printed on the same paper) because of how well they take media, and I've piled it on again here, with gesso, Shimmerz mists, Prima chalk inks and Twinkling H2Os watercolour paints.

I've been saving this quote to use on just such a project - I love the sentiment:

I matted my photo collage using two layers of Blue Fern chipboard, starting with one of the Beaded Strings circles. I painted it with a thick gesso (because I find super heavy gesso spreads so much easier with better coverage), then added some touches of watercolour paints, and then added a bit more gesso once those were dry to tone everything down a little. I also added some grey ink to the outside for definition.

The second layer of my photo mat is one of the Quatrefoil Garden Panels. I cut it in half lengthwise so that I could have a border both on top of and below my photos, and painted it with a shimmery acrylic paint.

To create a horizon line across my page, I used a piece of one of the Jeweled Page Dangles left over from another project. The links are coloured with chalk ink, and I used some of the shimmery watercolour paint I used on the page to colour the flower, and topped it with some bling.

Blue Fern Studios Products Used:

- Blue Fern Garden: Picnic

- Blue Fern Chipboard: Beaded Strings, Jeweled Page Dangles, Quatrefoil Garden Panels

Thank you for stopping by today! I will be back tomorrow with another Blue Fern Studios project, or if you're impatient to view them all, head on over to the Blue Fern Studios Blog.

Mark Your Calendars - Flying Unicorn Blog Hop!

Mark your calendars - from June 19th to 21st the Flying Unicorn Creative Team are going to wow you with their creations using the incredibly popular Julie Nutting Mixed Media Doll Stamps from Prima. Tons of inspiration and giveaways - be sure to join in!

And in the meantime, if you have any paper dolls you'd like to share, be sure to pop by Jen Snyder's Valley of the Paper Dolls challenge at Flying Unicorn - any paper doll whether stamped, hand-drawn, colored, paper-pieced, etc is eligible to win the RAK.

Flying Unicorn Kit of the Month - Julie Nutting Wooden Doll

Hi everyone! Just a quick post for me today :)

It's no secret I love Julie Nutting dolls :) So when I opened up my Flying Unicorn June kit and found this wooden beauty, I was over the moon. She was included in the Mixed Passion Add-On, and I made the tag she's on using supplies from the Small Art, Big Passion kit.

I coloured the doll in with my new Faber-Castell Watercolour pencils - LOVE these.

A couple closeups:

Thank you for stopping by!

What Can You Do Wednesday - Primary Elements for Flying Unicorn

I'm up today over at Flying Unicorn with a What Can You Do Wednesday (WCYDW) tutorial on using Primary Elements. If you haven't yet discovered Primary Elements, prepare to be wowed by all these little pots of magic have to offer. If you have Primary Elements sitting unused in your stash, hopefully this tutorial will be just what you need to get to you to fall in love (or fall in love all over again) with these little powerhouses. And if you're a regular Primary Elements user, we'd love to hear your favourite uses for these shimmery pigments.

I use one of my art journals for messing about in when I'm trying out products, so you'll notice that my examples in the video are a lot messier than my finished project (which is at the end of the video as well as farther down in this post). I even decided to change things up mid-stride with disastrous results (you'll know it when you see it), but I find this type of playing around is helpful for me to learn what I can (and shouldn't) do with different products.

Without further ado, let's get on to the video.

So there's a quick introduction to Primary Elements. In addition to the uses highlighted in the video, you can also make your own mists (using Gum Arabic just as you would for paint), colour other media, including paper clay (because it is white and opaque the colour turns out much as it does when you mix the Primary Elements with white gesso) and custom-blend colours.

Here is an inspiration layout I made using the June kit of the month.

I didn't mention that one of the great things about Primary Elements is how they look on top of dark backgrounds, now did I? Well, as you can see from the layout above, they offer stunning coverage, even on black paper. So much to love about these little beauties.

A little rundown of the techniques I used on this layout:

Stamping with embossing ink and dusting on Primary Elements with a dry brush (colours used: African Jade and Mystique).

Painting onto my paper layers (mixed with Gum Arabic; colour used: Autumn Butternut).

Mixing with Gloss Gel Medium and scraping through a stencil (colour used: China Black).

Painting onto textured alphas (colour used: Autumn Butternut).

Splattering (and painting flowers - most noticeable on the second from the right; colour used: Autumn Butternut).

Thank you so much for watching! There are a couple sets of Primary Elements currently available in the store, with a big restock arriving shortly. I would love to see what you create with these little gems - I've fallen in love all over again.

Supplies

From the Kit:

- Tailgate Marked papers: Farfalla, My Street, Airborne

- Petaloo Dahlias Small Naturals

- Petaloo Wild Mini Blossoms Aqua

From my stash:

- Prima stamps: Doily Large #1 & Small Doilies

- Ranger Embossing Dabber

- Primary Elements: African Jade, Mystique, China Black, Autumn Butternut

- Krylon Workable Fixative

- Gloss Gel Medium

- Prima mask: 6x6 Checker

- Jacquard Gum Arabic

- Prima Lifetime Canvas alphas

- Black mesh

Blue Fern Studios June Sketch Challenge

How did it get to be June already? I don't know what June is like in your neck of the woods, but around here it is crazy busy. School is wrapping up, we have a preschool graduation, end of the year gymnastics class, baseball is wrapping up, and we're going to deliver a litter of puppies in our home for PADS (the assistance dog organization I work for) before the mom and litter moves on to their caretaker.

The beginning of June also brings with it another fabulous sketch challenge from Blue Fern Studios. This month I'm playing with the new Ombre Dreams collection from Blue Fern - I love the soft, watercolour backgrounds, and the way many of the designs used on BFS chipboard are featured in the backgrounds, as well.

This picture of my youngest is washed out by the sun shining behind him, but it is too cute not to use, so a softer background paper was ideal to avoid over-powering the photo.

Here is this month's sketch:

Isn't it lovely? As usual, you can interpret the sketch however you like as long as you use Blue Fern Studios chipboard.

The Spring Trinkets piece was too lovely to be concealed beneath the title strip cut from the Dream Cards paper, so after adding colour I cut the piece in two and mounted the title on foam dots.

Page Dangles don't necessarily need to dangle - this partial piece of one of the Jeweled Page Dangles makes a great horizon line beneath my angled photo mat. I built on the watercolor background by adding some blue mists.

The Memory Frames got the same treatment as the other chippies.

I hope you'll play along with us this month for your chance to win some Blue Fern goodies!

Blue Fern Studios Products Used:

Ombre Dreams papers: 

- Julianna's Dream x2

- Susan's Dream

- Dream Cards

Chipboard: 

- Spring Trinkets

- Jeweled Page Dangles

- Memory Frames

Flying Unicorn Small Art Big Passion Card Kit

Have you checked out Flying Unicorn's Small Art, Big Passion kits? Perfect for carmakers, these kits also contain lots of goodies that can be used along with the main kit and other add-ons.

I love to take these mini kits with me when we go away for a weekend - they are a perfect size for travel, and allow me to get my creative fix without a lot of packing. Everything on the card below, including the ink, is from this month's Small Art, Big Passion kit.

Here are a couple close ups:

Thanks for stopping by today! If you haven't scored yours yet, head on over to the Flying Unicorn to see if any are left - they've been going fast! Otherwise, if you don't want to mis a kit again, check out the preorder option here.