Rhino 4x4 tile

So I started out with Strathmore Artist Tile 4x4.

 I wanted to see how Distress Oxide worked with Nuance Powers. So I did one color of the Distress Oxide (wilted violet). I had to use my favorite color. Then I did the smooching technique with the Distress Oxide. Dried that and then made a watercolor out of the blue, green and purple  Nuance powers .( had some orange left over from when I did the first 4x4 tile so I added it here too)

Next I added them to my 4x4 tile. I hit that with a heat gun to dry.  When dry I stamped the Grunge Diamond Background from Carmen's Veranda.

 When I was looking at it I thought it still needed something so I splattered black and white paint on it. When that was drying I stamped my Rhino and Winged Skeleton and colored with Copic markers

I cut the wings of the skeleton and attached them to my rhino and then I took a stamping block that had waves on the side and traced that with a thin black marker to give some lines for the rhino to stand on then I glued the rhino in place.

They were fun and fast.

Be Happy

Hi there, Cathy here to show you how I made my Be Happy postcard. I really had fun doing this postcard and I hope you give it a try. Here is most of the supplies I used to make this.

First I added molding paste thought a stencil onto my postcard. Then I let dry. Clean your stencil right away because you do not want to get the paste stuck on there. Then the stencil becomes useless.

Next I put some Nuance powers onto my craft mat and sprayed them with water and made them into watercolor

                                                             Heat dried this

Next I stamped the Corner swirl with green ink and Grunge diamond background with blue ink. I stamped them in their same watercolor colors.

Close up.
Next I used a image from the coloring book. I had already had cut up the page before so I cut out the flower and colored it with Copic markers. Edge it with black so you don't see the white edges.  Then I cut it in half to put on the edge of the post card.
                                                     (this is the other half)

Last I stamped Be Crazy Be Stupid saying and cut it out. Taped it to the postcard and I outlined the words with thin line black marker.

I hope this gets your creative juices flowing and try something like it. Thanks for looking. 

 

February Is For Lovers: Or, When I Am King You Shall Be Queen

Hello stamplings! Today for your creative delectation I'm going to walk you through the piece I made for our Lovers event, "When I Am King." (You have two more days to enter your lovers-themed art --until midnight, February 25th--for your chance to win cool stuff! Click on the link in this paragraph and find out the deets if you haven't already entered!)

Do you guys know the children's rhyme "Lavender's blue, dilly dilly"? I took it as my inspiration as I was looking at our fab king and queen chess pieces from the Chess Set. You know how some men will promise you anything, right? LOL So here's our lovable braggart king making you his queen.

Here's how I did it.

Using permanent (waterproof) ink, stamp the awesome king and queen onto hot-press (for a smooth surface) watercolor paper. Stamp and cut masks for the figures, and place the masks over the stamped images.

Sprinkle blue, purple, and gray Nuance powders liberally about! At this point, your piece will look approximately like this:

Now go town and mist the powders with water to your heart's content. Watch the magic happen as they bloom and blend! I like to leave them a little dry in spots for texture, but you're the boss here.

I next used a checkerboard stencil to suggest a chess board, and spritzed some more color through the stencil. (Did you know that you can use the Nuance Powders to make your own sprays? Yep--just put a bit in a mister, add water, and you're good to go!)

Let dry, and stamp "king" and "queen" with the Old Typewriter Alphabet, and emboss with silver EP. I outlined the letters in black artist pen to help them stand out, which also has the advantage of giving the letters more of a funky, arty, handmade look. The other text was computer-generated and collaged on.

With the masks still in place, drizzle and splotch some white and silver acrylic paint to bring light to some of the dark areas and add a little dimension to the piece.

When dry, remove the masks, and paint the figures with pale washes of lavender, blue, and purple. Accent the figures with sparkly silver glitter gel pen to further catch the light. Edge the piece with lavender chalk ink.

You are done! Admire the fruits of your labor...and maybe go give the king a kiss for elevating you to royal status!

"It's a Crow Party" Re-usable Dinner Party Place Holders

Happy Holidays Everyone!

It's getting so Christmasy over at Lost Coast Portal to Creativity with our Xmas celebrations underway....see my Day 1 of It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas projects if you haven't stopped by yet!

This is also the season for lots of dinner parties and guests need to know where they are sitting so how about making some fun place holders that are re-usable by adding banners die cut from Dry Erase White Board tape by Scotch!  I made these for our new LCPtoC Challenge #31 for December...this month's theme is Party Critters!

I used the following Lost Coast Designs stamps:

Crow Party

 and

Loopy Calligraphy

I used Nuance pigment powders by Magenta to create the yummy colourful background.  I love the feeling of celebration they bring to my place holders, the burst of colours look like fireworks...perfect!  I used 3 of the newest colours to the Nuance family:  Aquamarine, Rosebud and Wisteria.  

 You'll notice there's some extra colours mixed in there too...that's a little surprise you can get with the powders.  Sometimes a speck of powder from another colour gets in by accident during production so you never really know what you're going to get until you start creating.  But it doesn't always happen so each time you use the powders each result will have a different effect...I think that's fun and quite magical.  You can get the Nuance powders at Lost Coast Designs too!

The crows were all stamped with Onyx Black Versafine ink and the Loopy Calligraphy background stamped with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink.  I added touches of colour to the Crow's hats with Prismacolor pencils and embellished with tiny assorted pompoms and tinsel pipe cleaners.  I used a Marvy corner rounder punch on the edges and doodled the black and white borders with Dylusions paint pens.  I made folded cards from green cardstock and adhered the everything with Scotch Quick Dry adhesive.

Thanks for stopping by to see my project today!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Leigh S-B

THE SHARPIE DOMINO QUEEN

Anything Goes...with Nuance Powders :)

Hiya Lost Coasters! Today I have two quick projects up for the "Anything Goes" challenge that I wanted to tell you a little bit about and hopefully get your imagination and hands busy creating.  :)

I just got some of the Nuance powdered pigments this month and have been having lots of fun playing with these. Just a tiny sprinkle of powder and some spritzes of water = hours of entertainment! (OK, so I am easily entertained. But you probably will be too--these powders are COOL!)

The first project I wanted to share with you is this card to usher in October:

This was made by sprinkling autumnal colors of the powder onto white watercolor paper, keeping the sprinkles mostly to one side of the card. I then sprayed the paper with several spritzes of water. Where you use more water, the color runs and flows together, as in the big splash of fiery red and orange on this piece; drier specks of powder can also be seen moving away from the "splash" area, which gives an interesting textured look. (You might have to enlarge the pic to get a good look at this effect.) The amount you spray is up to you! Dryish or wet, these powdered pigments look fantastic, and the colors are beautiful.

Next I took two Lost Coast Designs stamps: an abstract background from the ATC Grunge Set, and the Gothic text block from ATC Text Set 1. To ink them, I stamped into the still-wet "splash" from the Nuance powders; I wanted to carry over the colors from the splash, so I stamped the abstract grunge set stamp into the white area of the card, then stamped the Gothic text block several times to add depth and interest to the splash area. It's OK that the text is wet and messy--it's just to add texture and isn't supposed to be legible. No need to be careful with this technique!

I then gave the whole thing a spritz of heirloom gold shimmer spray...you know, because I like shiny stuff. (Actually, it's super subtle in real life, the shimmer--I didn't use much!)

After drying this background with my trusty heat tool, I then composed the word "October" using the Rustic Alphabet Set  and embossed it with a mixture of green and copper embossing powders for a sort of verdigris patina look. Then I used a bullet-tipped embossing ink pen and wrote the word "welcome" and embossed it too.

I edged the card with chalk inks...mounted it on a shimmery pale gold card that I edged with heirloom gold metallic ink...then mounted the whole thing on piece of green cardstock, which I daubed with chalk ink for a soft sort of suede-y look in real life. And that was it for that project!

Now, for the second project that I made for "Anything Goes" using my new Nuance powders.  :) What is special about this ATC is the "cracked-glass effect" that I used to make it seem like the card is encased under a piece of...well, cracked glass.  :)  If you want to learn how to do this easy and fun technique, go have a look at the tutorial up on my blog and tell me what you think!

Here's the piece:

Happy creating...and happy fall!

--Paula

Durer Art Nude tags featuring Nuance Watercolour Backgrounds!

Howzit Lost Coasters!

Our monthly Challenge over at Lost Coast Portal to Creativity is Watercolour Backgrounds and today I'm sharing the 2 tags I made for the Aug 15th midway post!  The challenge closes at 5 to midnight PST on Aug 25th so you've still got plenty of time to join the fun!

 Before I tell you about my tags I want to let you know about our new event that started today over at Lost Coast Portal to Creativity!  Pop on over and join us for HIP 2 BE SQUARE!  The LCDesigners have fabulous SQUARE projects to share daily through to the end of August!  Stop by for all the fabulous LCDesigenr projects and enter your own Square projects too!

 Okay, now for my tags!  Both of these started out in the same way.  I used standard sized white shipping tags and curved both ends by using a large Spellbinders circle die as a template, traced the curves onto the tags and trimmed with scissors.  Then I had fun creating my watercolour backgrounds with Nuance Powders.

Backside Woman

On this tag I used Bright Yellow, Grass Green and Jade Nuance powders and sprinkled microscopic specs onto the tag controlling where I wanted each colour to go while at the same time allowing some randomness as well.  Remember these powders are vibrant pigment based powders and a tiny spec of the powder packs a powerful punch once mixed with water.  I spritzed the tag lightly with water and moved the liquid around by tilting the tag and guiding the flow and then I soaked up the excess liquid with paper towel once I was happy with the result.  Once the tag was dry I stamped Backside Woman with black Versafine ink and then created the two "spotlight" circles by die cutting out the circles (Spellbinders) from white cardstock and stamping the areas I wanted by laying the circles onto the inked stamp.  Traditionally the "spotlight technique" is done with the spotlit area coloured so I like to call what I did "reverse spotlight" coz I kept the circles in black and white and coloured the rest of the stamp instead.

here's a closer look at the details

For this tag I created the watercolour background with 3 shades of blue Nuance Powders: Turquoise, Cerulean Blue and Royal Blue.  Serendipity had a hand in this one coz there must have been some specs of pink powder in one of the blues....totally fine by me LOL!  I then spritzed with water and manipulated the flow of colour just like I did with the other tag until I was happy with the result.  Once the tag was dry I stamped it Balancing Vixen in black Versafine ink and created two "spotlight" circles for this one too.  I then die cut out the Spellbinders lacy scalloped circle mats from black cardstock and also cut black mats for the tags.  Before adhering the stamped panels to the black cardstock pieces I applied metallic gold rub-on cream to them and then adhered everything with Scotch Quick Dry adhesive.

Balancing Vixen

 I completed both tags by adding the various fibers which I thread through the shipping tag holes and adhered the "spotlights" in place with pop dots.

a closer look at the details

Did you know that 5 new gorgeous colours have been added to the Nuance powder range?

Wisteria, Rosebud, Mango Tango, Spring Green and Aquamarine...oooolala!  These will be up on the Lost Coast Designs website soon but you can order them now via the LCD email if you NEED them ASAP!  Click HERE for ordering info!

Please note that the LCD store has been experiencing tech issues since Monday but things are getting back up and running already but if you encounter a link that isn't working please try again in a few hours or so.

Thanks for stopping by to see my projects today!

Happy Stamping!

 Leigh S-B

THE SHARPIE DOMINO QUEEN

Wings

Good morning everyone and thank you for dropping by.  I wanted to share with your my PL-sized card entitled Wings.  I used a couple of the new stamp releases available at Lost Coast Designs.

1)  Stamp Indinkera onto a piece of PL-sized (3-3/4 x 5-3/4) white cardboard.
2)  Stamp Winged Girl twice onto mixed media paper with Versafine ink.  Emboss one with LSG Midnight Copper EP and one with Cleopatra's Copper EP.  Cut out.
3)  Sprinkle Nuance powder in orange, bright yellow, and grace green on the background and mist with water.  Dry.
4)  Stencil translucent paste randomly through a circle stencil.
5)  Die cut some shapes using the Sizzix Crosshatch Frameworks die and paint with coral paint.  Spinkle on glitter while the paint is still wet.  Add to background.
6)  Punch out leaves and butterflies.  Spray leaves with LSG Bells of Ireland Green and butterflies with Cotton Candy Pink, A Bit O' Bubbly, and Frenchy's Pink Pouf mists.
7)  Place the Winged Girl you embossed with Midnight Copper EP on top of the other and offset slightly.  Glue together, then add mounting pads at the back to pop it up off the page and add to the card.
8)  Glue down the leaves in a circle around your image.  Add butterflies.
9)  Using soft matte gel, scatter glass glitter, micro beads, and glass beads across the card.  I used rose glass glitter, rust glass beads, and grass microbeads.
10)  Add TH Small Talk words.  Splatter with yellow and white pain and black gesso.

I like using the white cardboard because it's very sturdy.  It held up well to the stamping and all the embellishments and wet media I added.

Hope you enjoyed today's creation.  Until later...................

Marilyn

For The Birds

Good Monday morning everyone!  Hope you July is going great.  I wanted to share with you a tag I created for the current event going on over on the Lost Coast Portal to Creativity.  I've stepped out the process so you can see how it was created.

Start by stamping Bubbles onto a tag with black ink.  Sprinkle Nuance powders in different colors across the tag then mist to activate.  When that dried, I used yellow and orange markers to color in some of the bubbles.  I then dry brushed gesso over the tag to somewhat mute the very bright colors.

Stamp Mini Whimsical Birds 1 & 2 onto some mixed media paper and color with a selection of LSG sprays.  Cut out.  Next cut out some bricks (I used Sizzix's Mixed Media 3 set) and paint with Paper Artsy Cherry Red then emboss with DI Fired Brick EP.  Using a baby wipe, brush a little black paint across the bricks.

Water down some red and black paint and flick across the background.  Do the same with some gesso.  When that is dry, glue down the brick and add shadows with the gray Nuance powder mixed with a little water.  Cut out and paint some alphas and numerals and add to the background.  Add your bricks to the tag then position your birds over the bricks.  Finally, roll a piece of red ribbon in some gray Nuance powder mixed with water and tie off to the top of the tag.

Easy peasy!

Until later.............................
Marilyn

Let's Dance

Good morning everyone!  I wanted to share a project I created for Skelli-Fest and give you a step-by-step on how I went about creating it.

1)  Stamp the Spiderweb background in Unicorn pigment ink onto your tag.  Emboss with either white or clear EP.  The goal is to protect the stamped image during the next step.
2)  Sprinkle on Nuance powder in Scarlet and Gray.  Spritz with water and dry.
3)  Remove EP by placing a sheet of typing paper over the tag and ironing until it's all been lifted.  Your iron needs to be hot and it may take several passes to get it all off.  I used two sheets of paper on before I got all the EP removed.
4)  Stamp Dancing Skeletons in black Versafine ink and emboss with black EP.
5)  Using the Old Typewrite Stamp Set, stamp "Let's Dance" with black Versafine ink and double emboss with black EP.
6)  Ink the edges with a black ink pad.
7)  Tie on a piece of black fiber.

You're done!  A fun, spooky tag that was a joy to create.

Well, that's it for now.  Stay tuned for more stamping fun!

Until later.....................

Marilyn

Ghostie BOO Birds & Nuance Backgrounds

Happy Half-O-Ween Lost Coaster's!

Leigh here to share some Half-O-Ween inspiration featuring Whimsical Birds by Doris Arndt and Nuance Powders by Magenta now available at Lost Coast Designs!

We are currently celebrating Halloween in May every 2nd day until May 31st over at Lost Coast Portal to Creativity.  Stop by to see lots of spooktacular projects and then dig out your Halloween stamps and join the linky party for the chance to win a fab $15 shopping spree at Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda!

 For Day 1 of Half-O-Ween I made these 2 ATCs featuring both the large and mini versions of Whimsical Flora.  These are our latest addition to the Lost Coast Designs line of quality rubber stamps consisting of 8 large birdies and 2 sets of minis.  

Both ATCs started out the same way with a scrumptious background created with the fabulous Nuance Powders by Magenta.  We currently stock all 15 colours but it's just been announced that 5 new colours are heading our way...SQUEEEE!  

 

 I had so much fun just letting the powders do their magic.  I tapped micro specks of grey, violet, hot pink, orange and golden yellow onto the ATCs and then spritzed with water.  While wet I smooshed an ATC blank on top of another to transfer the colour and also played around with the colour soaked up by the paper towel to make even more backgrounds.  I then dried them all with my heat gun and ironed them flat.  

 

 

I stamped Lost Coast Design's large Spiderwebs background onto both ATCs in Tea Dye Distress Ink.

 

 

On the first ATC I created the pale moon using a circle punch as a mask and Cloud White VersaMagic ink dabbed on with a piece of paper towel and I also stamped the Cracked Grass and Sky with Brilliance Platinum Planet to add the little stars and dots to the background of both ATCs.

 

 

I continued building my scenes by stamping the large and mini Cracked Tree in Onyx Black VersaFine ink and added shimmer and shine to the branches with "Perfect Pearl" Perfect Pearls powder mixed with water and applied with a paint brush.  The light catches the shimmer only at certain angles for magical effect.

 

 Now for my Ghostie Birds...both Whimsical Floras were stamped twice on Neenah cardstock with Tuxedo Black Memento ink and coloured with Copics and Prismacolor pencils.  I fussy cut out the entire bird from the 1st set and just the heads from the 2nd.  The heads were adhered with pop dots and I also applied Judikins Diamond Glaze to their eyes for extra dimension and shine.  The "BOO" text was stamped with Old Type Writer Alphabet set in both lower and upper case, one was left plain and the other I coloured with purple Prismacolor pencil.  I drew the frames with a black Micron pen and added black Prismacolor pencil and adhered the "BOOs" to the ATCs with Scotch Quick Dry adhesive.

 

That's it from me today, I hope you enjoyed seeing how I made these two Ghostie BOO Bird ATCs and don't forget to stop by Lost Coast Portal to Creativity for more Half-O-Ween fun!

Before you go...did you know we are also celebrating our first Blogiversary at Lost Coast Portal to Creativity and we're giving away BLOG CANDY?!  Click HERE to see how you can get in on the action and celebrate with us ;0)

 

Happy Stamping!

Leigh S-B
THE SHARPIE DOMINO QUEEN
LCD/CV DT Leader

Wizard of Oz Tutorial using Nuance Powders and Distress Inks

Hello Lost Coasters!

Leigh here today to share a tutorial on how I made the backgrounds for my "We're Not in Kansas Anymore!" tags.  These were so much fun to make and pretty easy to do too.  If you missed our Wizard of Oz DT blog hop then click HERE to catch a tornado to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where we host all our fun Events and Challenges.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore - tag set

My 5 tags feature the following stamps:
Carmen's Veranda Wizard of Oz characters
Carmen's Veranda Flying Monkeys background
Lost Coast Designs large Cityscape

To create my "yellow brick road" I randomly embossed the 5 manila shipping tags with a Darice Brick Wall embossing folder, placing the folder at weird angles so each tag was slightly different.  Using the direct to paper method I applied Mustard Seed Distress Ink to enhance the embossed design in a very loose and random manner.

 Lost Coast Designs now carries the Nuance powders by Magenta.  Nuance is a water-soluable powdered dye that comes in 15 vivid and bright colours.  The colours are available in individual 5-gram containers or as a boxed set so you can easily grab a colour or two to play with but trust me, you're going to want the whole set ;0)

I used Jade and Grass Green for the next step and randomly sprinkled the tiniest amounts of the powder onto the other side of my tags...these colours are so vibrant you really only need the tiniest speck of powder for a big result!  The magic happened when I spritzed with water to create the yummy mottled effect.   I heat set the tags to dry them before going onto the next step.

 I stamped my "Emerald City" in Peeled Paint Distress Ink using Lost Coast's large Cityscape stamp, we also have a new smaller version too!

 

 Then I stamped the flying monkeys with Black Soot Distress Ink.

I then worked some more on my "yellow brick road" - I applied Scattered Straw Distress Ink directly to the embossed bricks for a variation in of shades of yellow and also added some touches of Yellow 627 Marvy Le Plume alcohol marker for extra detail.  

I finished off the tags with red glitter glue applied to all the edges.  Stop by my blog, LeighSBDesigns, for info on the Oz characters and more photos!

Thanks for stopping by to see my tutorial today!

Don't forget that there's still time to play in our CRACKED CRITTERS SHOWCASE event.  Pop on over for some seriously wacky inspiration and then enter your own Cracked Critter creations in the linky on the Day 1 post HERE by midnight PST on May 7th for the chance to win a $10 shopping spree at Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda! 

Happy Stamping!

Leigh S-B

THE SHARPIE DOMINO QUEEN

LCD/CV DT Leader