Guest Designer - Amy Brown

Welcome to Guest Designer Friday. This month we have another "new to Cropstop" guest designer --- Amy Brown from Brite Designs Studio. Amy created a super cute (and FUN) scrapbook page layout to inspire you --- What better way to showcase all those photos you took over the Christmas holidays?!

Here's what Amy says:

"I cut strips of the patterned Christmas Town paper into various sizes, tearing the edges of some and fringing others to give the page some fun texture and detail. I stitched each to the page with my sewing machine using white thread in zigzag and straight stitches. I then splattered metallic watercolors over the page, and set to work on the main photo. I backed the photo with some vellum and Scotch foam tape. After the watercolor splatters dried I adhered the photo and embellished the page with Doodlebug Christmas ephemera, stickers, and paper flowers."

Supplies used: 

Doddlebug Christmas Town paper pack (6x6)

Michael's paper flowers

Doodlebug Christmas ephemera (not sure of the exact pack, they are from last year, sorry!)

K&Company Very Merry embossed stickers

Metallic watercolors

Scotch foam tape

Why not show us what you've been working on of late....stop by our FINAL LINK PARTY and show off any project that includes a product or two from companies carried in the Cropstop store. 

August Link Party - #42

Time for another link party here on the Cropstop blog. Last month I shared an easy way to create a striped background, and this month I'm back for Take #2.

To create the background for my first card I:

•  stamped my Abandoned Coral Distress Ink (Ranger) on my acrylic block and spritzed it with water
• using a wide paintbrush I painted messy lines across my watercolor paper and added splatters

I decorated this card by:

• stamping two flowers/stems from the Blossom Stamp Set (Tim Hotlz) in Versamark Watermark ink, adding black embossing powder, and heat setting
• I painted the flowers with Abandoned Coral/Picked Raspberry Distress Ink and the stems with Mowed Lawn/Pine Needles Distress Ink
• The sentiment is from the Bird Crazy set (Tim Holtz) and is embossed on the card front

For my second card I painted smaller stripes in the center of my watercolor paper panel using blues and greens. The colors of distress ink from top to bottom are:
Twisted Citron, Cracked Pistachio, Peacock Feathers, Salty Ocean, Mermaid Lagoon

I decorated this card by:

• stamping the butterfly and hearts from the Watercolor stamp/stencil set (Tim Holtz) on water color paper and fussy cutting
• stamping the sentiment (Bird Crazy stamp/stencil set - Tim Holtz) in two colors of distress ink, slightly offset from each other
• adding some clear glitter to the hearts and center of my butterfly

 Now it’s your turn to share the projects you’ve been working on! As always our link party is "Anything Goes" with these few simple rules:

1. Create ANY new project using a product or two from one of the companies CropStop carries in the store. (It’s ok if you didn’t buy it from us, and also fine if it’s a product we don’t currently have it in stock as long as it’s from one of the companies we carry!)
2. Please, no back-linking old projects
3. Limit 5 entries per challenge
4. Link your project here, link back to this post, and mention the CropStop Challenge in your post.

We’ll choose one random Winner who will receive a prize from the CropStop Store! (100 or more links = two winners and two prizes!) Thanks so much for linking up with us, we look forward to seeing all your great entries this month. Grab our badge and help us spread the word that CropStop is a great place to play along!

Optional Twist for August:

Create a project that includes a striped background and I'll enter your name twice in the random draw.

Clear Gesso

Hello friends! I'm fairly new to the mixed media art world, so I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with different products and discovering techniques to use in my card making. Today I want to share a card I created with Clear Gesso as the base, so let's get started.....

To create my background I:

• painted a piece of card stock with a layer of Clear Gesso (Art Basics)
• once dry, I used sponge daubers to apply Broken China Distress Oxide (Ranger) to the center
• next I, spritzed the ink with some water
• using a small paintbrush, I spread the ink around my card stock to form a pretty background and let it dry

The wonderful thing about Clear Gesso is that it doesn't change the color of your paper at all, but it gives you a surface that's slightly textured and holds the paints, inks, watercolors you apply so they won't soak into your paper right away. Regular card stock will soak up the color, dry quickly, and pill after too many applications of water. Here's a photo of white card stock without the gesso to show you the difference in the above technique:

You'll notice:

1. The color didn't spread nearly as far - the center is dark/the edges are light - uneven color
2. The color isn't as vibrant as it soaked into the paper
3. The paper has a bit of "pill" to it
4. It doesn't look like watercolor like the above panel does

To create my panel I:

• stamped flowers, stems, and "sentiment" from the Blossom stamp set (Tim Holtz) in Tuxedo Black ink Tsukineko)
• colored the stems with Touch Five Markers
• using a Splatter Brush (Ranger) I applied some diluted (with water) Frayed Burlap Distress Oxide (Ranger)
• glued my flowers (below) over top and fussy cut around one to create a popped out image

 

For the flowers I:

• painted a piece of card stock with a layer of Clear Gesso (Art Basics)
• stamped a flower from Blossom (Tim Holtz) in Versamark Watermark ink and added black embossing powder
• applied some Spun Sugar Distress Crayon (Tim Holtz) to the petals and painted with water and a small paintbrush (since I was cutting these out I didn't worry about staying in the lines)
• applied Picked Raspberry Distress Crayon (Tim Holtz) to the petals and repeated the wet paintbrush step
• applied Spiced Marmalade Distress Crayon (Tim Holtz) to the centers and painted it with water
• using just water and a clean paintbrush I removed some of the ink from the centers of my flowers
• This is possible because of the Clear Gesso -- the ink is longer drying and can be moved around and removed for some time - I tried this same technique on regular white card stock without gesso and it didn't work!

To finished off my card I:

• stamped a Script background stamp (SU) in Versamark Watermark ink  over my flowered panel 
• added white embossing powder and heat set
• matted my panel on pink card stock
• embossed a piece of white card stock with the Lattice embossing folder from Creative Expressions
• assembled my card

Now it's your turn....stop by our CURRENT LINK PARTY and showoff any projects that include a few products from companies Cropstop carries in the store! I'll look forward to seeing your work appear in the gallery!

The colorful world of distressing inks!

We have two new classes that talk about how to use your distress ink pads and re-inkers, they are right in our Crop Stop's Forum in the Class section. Here are some samples of the gorgeous things you can learn how to do in the class: