Butterfly Reflections, Ink

Hello and happy Friday to you!   Several current and past BRI design team members are participating in a fun blog hop called Blogs 4 Boobies sponsored by Skipping Stones Design !   This is a one-of-a-kind blog (hop) bounce!   Every card/project that is shown in the "Blogs 4 Boobies" blog bounce is up for auction.   All of the money raised through the silent auction, on participants' blogs, will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.   You can help by bidding!   You can help us raise money for the Komen Foundation by bidding on a project or card along the blog bounce (hop).   EVERY SINGLE card/project along the Blogs 4 Boobies bounce is up for auction.   We recommend a starting bid of $5 or more.   Your bid not only includes the card or project, but shipping to your home as well.   If you are the highest bidder 7 days after the first post date at 8 p.m. mountain time, then you WIN the card/project that you bid on!   Now.....t...

Good morning!   Jess  here with a cheery watercolored Mother's Day card using the new Beautiful Bouquet: Dahlia stamp from WPlus9 and Mom+Me sentiments from Lawn Fawn! I started off by using my Mini Misti to stamp the Dahlia Bouquet twice on a piece of watercolor paper with versamark .  I offset it both times and used a larger section of the stamp for one side to give it more visual interest.  I heat-embossed it with Gold Tinsel embossing glitter and then it was time to color!  I used six Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers and a waterbrush to color the flowers.  The larger flower is colored with Carmine Red and the smaller flowers are colored with a mix of Carmine Red and Dark Pink.  The larger leaves are colored with Green, the smaller leaves with May Green, and the background with very watered down Cobalt Blue.  For the leaves and flowers, I added pigment to the paper and blended it out with a waterbrush .  For the background I ...

Just a quick reminder that Vanessa is away this weekend and the shop site is unavailable until she's home.  It will be back online later this weekend (and you can purchase all the great supplies I used for these cards)!! ;) Good morning!   Jess here with a set of fun and unique colorburst cards! The secret to this look?  An air puffer used to clean photograph equipment!  I highly recommend using a puffer that's strictly reserved for crafting use...you wouldn't want to accidentally puff powder into the inner workings of your camera!! It's a fairly simple process...you place a piece of watercolor paper in a scrap box (to keep the powders from getting everywhere), sprinkle colorburst powder onto the paper, spritz it with water, and then puff away!  The puffing creates those thin tendrils of color.  I've created a video showing the process for three of my cards! View in HD To complete each card I used my mini MISTI to stamp sentiments f...

Good morning!   Jessica here...I'm super excited to be back on the Butterfly Reflections Ink blog !  I've missed it!  I'm here today with a card featuring some of the new products from Altenew ! I LOVE the Dodec cover plate die !  The patterns are so pretty!  So I started off by smooshing Spun Sugar, Picked Raspberry, Dried Marigold, and Ripe Persimmon distress inks onto a piece of watercolor paper.  Then I die-cut the panel with the Dodec die and adhered it to a white card base.  Next I die-cut the Thanks sentiment from dark pink cardstock and ran a versamark pad over the bottom third of the sentiment before heat-embossing it with glittery gold embossing powder .   I stamped the Persian Motifs with versamark onto white cardstock and vellum and then heat-embossed it with the same gold glitter embossing powder .  I die-cut the flowers with the coordinating dies and then layered them under the sentiment.  I used foam mounti...

Good morning!   Jessica here with my final post as a design team member for Butterfly Reflections Ink !  It's crazy how fast the months have just flown by...I have loved my time on the team and I highly recommend that you consider applying (today's the last day!!) for the next term!  Vanessa is AMAZING and I created this card with her in mind! I wanted to finish my term with my favorite card techniques...watercoloring and shakers!!  To start off I took a piece of acetate and used it to smoosh Abandoned Coral distress ink onto a 4x5.25 panel of watercolor paper.  Once the color totally saturated the panel I dried it with my heat tool.  At that point the color was fairly light so I used more distress ink to add splatters and blotches of varying intensities.  After I was happy with the background I set it aside to finish drying while I created the shaker! I cut the shaker from white cardstock using the Neat and Tangled Gardenia Blooms Journalin...

Good morning!  Jessica here with a pair of cards featuring a new stamp set from WPlus9! I love the Watercolored Anemones stamp from WPlus9 and was super excited to try it out!  I decided to try stamping on colored cardstock with a layer of white pigment ink beneath the colored inks. For the first card I stamped the bouquet from Watercolored Anemones on pink cardstock with white pigment ink.  Then I used two shades of green pigment ink and two shades of pink pigment ink to restamp the flowers, leaves, and stems.  Technically I think you're supposed to completely cover the white ink when you stamp over it but I kinda like the shading it adds when a sliver of the white shows through.  I used the darker pink pigment ink to stamp the word 'gorgeous' from Hand-Lettered Hello on the panel and then die-cut the word 'hello' from gold glitter paper.  The die-cut word is a matching die to the Hand-Lettered Hello stamp set. To assemble the card I layered...

Good morning, Jessica here!  I am LOVING the most recent Lawn Fawn release!  The aquatic theme stamp sets are SO cute!  Today, I made a shaker card using Fintastic Friends ! To create my card I started off by stamping the critters and fish tank accessories with Versafine Onyx Black ink  and heat-embossing them with clear embossing powder on watercolor paper .  Then I colored them with Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers and blended them with a watercolor brush.  I fussy cut all the critters so there wouldn't be a white border and added a little sparkle with my wink of stella clear glitter brush pen .  Next I used foam mounting tape and glue dots to adhere the fish to the tank.  The foam mounting tape gave some of the fish a little dimension!  I outlined the fish tank with foam mounting tape and filled it with 4mm sequins in various shades of blue and lots of white and clear seed beads.  I stamped the fish tank onto a piece of dark...

Good morning, Jessica here!  I am absolutely in love with the new release from Lawn Fawn and I was so excited to see that Vanessa is carrying the entire release in the shop!  My card for today uses one of the smaller new stamp sets, So Jelly ! I started off by stamping the jellyfish from So Jelly onto a piece of watercolor paper with Versafine Onyx Black ink before heat-embossing it with clear powder .  Then I used a Clean Color Real Brush marker in dark pink to color the jellyfish.  I added a little color to the top of the jellyfish, the spots, and the tops of the tentacles.  Then I used a clear wink of stella glitter brush to blend the color out across the jellyfish and add a little sparkle!  After the jellyfish was totally dry I used the matching dies to cut out each one. Next I took a piece of watercolor paper trimmed to 4" by 7" and taped it to my craft sheet.  Then I smooshed salty ocean, mermaid lagoon, chipped sapphire, and peacoc...

Good morning!   Jess here with a very important life-defining question... Are you a cat person or a dog person? It seems like all of the crafters on my Instagram feed have a furry four-legged friend (or two... or three...) who keeps them company while they're crafting.  Personally, I grew up as a dog person but adopting a kitten last year has slowly started to turn me into a cat person, too!  Now, whenever I'm shopping I always have to balance dog and cat stamps to keep everything fair! So when I saw these adorable Studio Calico Meow and Woof dies I just had to get both!  And this is what I came up with to celebrate my canine companions! And my feline friend! I started off by die-cutting the Meow and Woof dies with piece of black cardstock.  Then I glued them down to a square of white cardstock to create the back panel of my shaker card.  Next I die-cut two square frames and adhered acetate to the back of each frame.  Then I went t...

Good morning, Jessica here with a masculine birthday card featuring fun products from My Favorite Things! I started off by dabbing a little Black Soot Distress Ink onto my craft sheet and mixed it with Dreamweaver Embossing Paste  to create a gray paste.  I used the custom embossing paste color with the  My Favorite Things Equalizer Stencil  on a panel of black cardstock.  I actually misplaced the stencil and it ended up slightly crooked....but it was exactly the shade of grey I was looking for and I knew if I tried to replicate the color I'd be unsuccessful.  So I just decided to go with the flow and off set the whole card! ;) While the embossing paste was still wet I sprinkled it with a little silver glitter but the pieces seemed too big and wouldn't stick so I sprinkled it with silver glitter embossing powder and it stuck!  I never heat-set the paste, just let it dry naturally!  While it was drying I stamped the 'Have a Rockin'' sent...

Good morning!   Jessica here with a card featuring some gorgeous Altenew products and a new (to me) technique: coloring on embossed vellum! I started off by prepping my vellum with a powder tool so that stray embossing powder wouldn't stick to the vellum.  Then I stamped the Altenew Persian Motifs on the vellum in a random pattern using Versamark ink .  I started with the larger stamps and then filled in empty spaces with the smaller stamps.  After I had filled the panel I heat-embossed it with gold embossing powder.   Then the fun part!  I turned the vellum over and colored the flowers in with blue and teal copic markers!  I used a gold metallic paint pen for the leaves but unfortunately they ended up looking more green than I had intended when I turned the vellum over.  So I took a Pentel gold gel pen and colored over the leaves on top of the vellum and it added the color and shimmer I was looking for! Next I die-cut the word ...

Hi, Jessica here!  Over the weekend I finally gave in and picked up a laser printer and now I'm foiling everything in sight!  Ha.  I'll attempt to not just post foiled creations this month but I did want to share one today! If you're a regular blog follower of mine you'll notice that this card is quite out of the ordinary for me.  Recently I've been trying to push out of my comfort zone and experiment with different techniques and styles...and I'm pleased with how this turned out!  From certain angles the card just looks black and white but then you tilt the card slightly and the pink foil really pops! I started off by stamping the Memory Box Wildflower Corner die onto a piece of white scrap paper with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink .  The trick to smooth foiling coverage is to make sure the ink covers the paper evenly.  I actually misstamped this the first time so I used a q-tip to fill in a couple bare spots!  Next I used the laser printer to...

Good morning, Jessica here!  If the title of my post didn't immediately put a catchy little melody into your head, you should head  here and watch this first!  Then my card will make a little more sense! Butterfly Reflections Ink is officially the first U.S. store to carry Create a Smile stamps and Vanessa received her first shipment last week!  I was SO excited to get the newest Underwater Love stamp set in the mail yesterday that I dropped my original card idea for today and went a little narwhal crazy! Here's my card: Aren't those narwhals adorable!?!  I stamped them with Memento Tuxedo Black ink , colored them with copic markers, fussy cut them, and added googly eyes.  Then I set them aside to work on the rest of my card. I started off by blending Chipped Sapphire and Mermaid Lagoon distress ink onto a piece of white cardstock and used a piece of post-it tape to create the line for the horizon.  While that was drying I ripped s...

Good morning, Jessica here!  I'm a huge fan of Lawn Fawn stamps and I was so excited to pick up the adorable Gleeful Gardens set from Butterfly Reflections Ink !  I love the snail and thought he would make a cute belated birthday card! I started off by cutting the frame with the My Favorite Things Inside and Out Diagonal Stitched Rectangle STAX from white cardstock and stamping the sentiment with Memento Tuxedo Black ink .  Then I cut the clouds from the WPlus9 Sunshine Layers die with the leftover white cardstock.  I also stamped the flowers, grass, snail, and present with the same leftover piece of cardstock (yay for not wasting paper!) using Memento Tuxedo Black ink so that I could color them with copic markers.  After I colored the images I went over the clouds, flowers, snail shell, and present with a ton of clear wink of stella glitter .  You can see how much the snail sparkles!  I also added googly eyes to the snail for a little more ...

Hello, Jessica here!  I hope you enjoyed our week of Design Team introductions!  I'm so excited to be working with these super talented ladies and I hope their creations inspired you! Today I decided to mix different companies and products to create a card!  I recently picked up this Paper Smooches stamp set from Butterfly Reflections Ink because I loved all the sentiments!  I haven't seen many of those sentiments before and I love that fun cursive font. I saw the 'love deeply' sentiment and decided to use it to go in a little different direction...here's my card: I started off by blending Ranger distress inks in Black Soot, Seedless Preserves, Chipped Sapphire, and the newest color: Mermaid Lagoon  to create a deep ocean scene.  I stamped the sentiment onto the top right corner of the panel and then heat-embossed it with silver embossing powder.  Then I colored the adorable Lawn Fawn whales from Whale You Be Mine with copic markers and u...

Good morning!  Jessica here from All the Sparkle !  This is my first post as a new design team member for Butterfly Reflections Ink so I thought I'd start off by telling you a little bit about me! I live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with my amazing husband, two senior shelties, a senior but incredibly feisty rabbit, and a rambunctious kitten!  My husband and I are both musicians; he's a public school band director and I teach private harp and piano lessons to students ranging in age from 5 to 91 and freelance throughout the Northern VA area for weddings and other events!  I love that my job is not a typical 9 to 5 position...my students all have different personalities and backgrounds so each lesson is a very unique experience and, of course, no two weddings are ever the same! I think the reason I love my day job is also the reason I love making cards.  Except for a few rare occasions I never make the same card twice and I try to not use the sa...