Davina: November 2018

Welcome to day two of the Trinity Stamps winter release blog hop!

If you followed the hop on Friday, Thank you! I hope you found it as inspiring as I did.

If you haven't seen all the posts from Friday yet, I encourage you to go to the Trinity Stamps blog. What crafter wouldn't love more inspirations and more chances to win prizes, Right?

(I will have a direct link HERE as well as at the bottom of my post today)

Speaking of Prizes, Be sure to comment on all of the posts in the blog hop event. Trinity Stamps will be giving away FIVE PRIZE PACKS worth at least $25.00! Winners will be announced HERE on November 10th.

Can you believe that it's November already? Where has the year gone. As Fall hurriedly races onward, Trinity Stamps has been working hard to produce their second release (which you can see all of right HERE). This Magical release offers several stamps and dies from cute animals to holiday sets and a series of Wizard themed items that are to die for. I am especially excited because I illustrated many of the new designs in this new release. I will be working with one of those sets in my project today called "Rhino Bird Day"!

The entire time I was illustrating this particular stamp set, I thought and referred to it as the “chubby unicorn” set. I had this dreamlike watercolored scene in my head the whole time. Well, of course I just had to make my first project based on that vision!

I selected the images I wanted to use and got my supplies together. Using my Tonic stamp platform, watercolor paper, and archival ink. I wanted the lines to be thick and dark. Since watercolor paper is so thick and porous and I didn’t want to have my lines appear gray or uneven, I stamped the images several times over. Having a stamping tool like this can make that really easy, but you can of course use any acrylic stamping block too.

I love to watercolor using very diluted ink that is smooshed on the lids of my stamp pads. I just pick up that ink with my water brush. This gets me more use out of all those pretty colored ink pads than just stamping. I refer to the style as “water ploppy”. After the images are mostly dry, I go over the edges and shadowy areas with a small amount of the same color ink, just a more concentrated amount. This second layer of ink tends to sit on top rather than blend in. After all of the ink dries completely, I will sometimes go in with matching ink color marker and do little "dot-doodling" to assist in blending the different shades. I use a white gel pen to add any highlights I feel the image needs.

After all of my images are colored, I run them through my scan n cut with the blade set deep to 7. There is matching dies to this set as well which makes this project come together even faster. (Note to self: get the matching dies, you will use this set often!).

I decided I wanted the unicorn horn to be golden and glittery. So I used super fine metallic gold embossing powder from Wow! to add a glimmer to my white cardstock (which I also used on the clouds). I added glitter to a number of the images to give added shimmer.

I painted a very pale dreamy sunset-like background and once dry, I diecut that paper for my base. After, I heat embossed the sentiment "Find your inner unicorn" and then started to add my layers. My taller clouds were adhered directly to the panel but my shorter layer was popped up with foam tape so I could tuck my tufts of grass and “unicorns” to look like they are daydreaming in the clouds.

After getting everyone in their place, I added a party hat to the sitting rhino. I decided it was time to mount the panel to a soft pink card base. I used the lighter pink sequins from the “Glistening Snow” confetti mix to add some fun sparkle and finish up this scene. Aren't they adorable. I think this is a unique change to the unicorn trend, dont you?

I hope you’ve enjoyed my project today and found it inspiring. There is lot's more inspiration coming your way! Continue on the Trinity blog hop to see more of this amazing new release in action and comment along the way for the chance to win some amazing prizes as well!

Don't forget to hop through the Friday posts too!