Watercolor Painting with Coffee

My friend, Mary, told me about some portraits she'd seen that were painted with espresso!  She said they were striking and looked like sepia photos!!  She knows me and knew that I'd be challenged to give it a try!  Thanks, Mary!!  The most difficult part was brewing the coffee so I could get lots of different shades of brown to use.  I drink very weak coffee so the palest shade was easy.  The darker shades were much harder to achieve.  I felt like a mad scientist brewing espresso double strength multiple times, but that gave me the medium color, then I took some of that and added a few spoonfuls of instant coffee to get the darkest color.  Once I had the medium and dark color, I added some water to each to get shades in between.  Altogether I had 5 colors to paint with ranging from dark to light!

When I started painting, I was hooked!  The coffee behaved exactly like other watercolors and smelled delicious!!  I enjoyed it so much that I didn't want to stop so I have 3 cards to share with you.  On the first one, I used a flower from Tim Holtz Flower Garden stamp set.

After I finished painting with the coffee, I masked the flowers and added some interest to the background with stencils from My Favorite Things and Tim Holtz.  I used Distress ink and a blending tool for this.  The swirl at the top is from a Stampin' Up set called Baroque Motifs and the sentiment and "beautiful" die are from Concord & 9th.

I wanted to see how coffee painting would look on a more whimsical image, so I painted one of the cute little boy stamps from Lilli of the Valley.  I was very pleased with how it came out!  The browns fit perfectly with the old-timey look of the image!

For the extras on this card I used MFT's double stitched rectangle STAX and Picket Fence dies

On the last card I have to show you, I embossed Altenew's Persian Motif stamps with white embossing powder.  I was worried that the coffee might stain the white embossing, but it didn't.  I liked the simplicity of this card and thought it would make a good sympathy card.

The frame around the sentiment on this card is from MFT.  It is called Stitched Rectangle Scallop Frames and the sentiment is part of Hero Arts Prayers stamps and die set.

This was a really fun experiment.  I hope you enjoyed looking and that maybe you might give painting with coffee/espresso a try!  Thanks so much for visiting!

Janet 

Angel Gabriel - LOTV

I just love shadow box cards.  I don't know for sure what it is that I like about them but they make me happy.  The Angel Gabriel stamp from Lilli of the Valley reminded me of Nativity plays and since shadow box cards look kind of like a stage, they were a perfect match!

I used Copics to color the image and then cut the pieces for the shadow box.  You can view a Splitcoaststampers video tutorial by Dawn Griffith here.  I wanted to give my "stage" a primary school feeling and I thought the star border from My Favorite Things was perfect!  I finished the card off with a little clear glitter and a computer generated sentiment.  Here's a close up of the inside of the card...

I also put a sentiment on the back of the card since this kind of card doesn't have an inside!

I hope this gave you some ideas or inspired you to make a shadow box card!  Thanks for stopping by.  

Janet

Little Fairy

I tried a new fun fold for this card.  It is called the Double Fold Gate Card.  It's very versatile and works well with lots of different die cuts and stamps.  I used a Stampin' Up Framelit and one of the cute little fairies from Lili of the Valley Rubber Stamps.

Here is how the card looks when it's opened...so cute!

and a close up of the little fairy!

I liked this card so much that I made another one using different colors...

I thought the finished card needed some more pink so I used an EK Success punch to make a chain of little circles.  Because of the way the card opens, I needed something that looked good on the inside and out.  Here is a close up...

Thanks for visiting, have a happy weekend!

Supplies Used:

Stamps: Lili of the Valley - Fairies on Tiptoes

Cardstock: Scenic Route - Providence - Madison St. (red fairy)

                     3 Bugs in a Rug - Chloe - Mini Floral (pink fairy)

Inks:  Momento - Tuxedo Black

Copics: Hair: E50, E53, E57, E79 (both)

              Skin: E00, E02, R02 (both)

              Dress & Wings (red): R05, R08, R29, YG11, YG13, YG95

              Shoes (red): E50, E33,E53,E57

              Dress, Shoes & Wings (pink): BG000, BG01, BG 53, BG57

                                                                   RV00, RV02, RV04

              Flowers (red): R05, R08, R29

              Flowers (pink): RV04, RV06, RV09, R39

              Leaves (red): YG25, G99

              Leaves (pink): YG13, YG93, G99

              Shadow: BG90

Dies: Stampin' Up - Framlits - Labels Collection 

Miscellaneous: EK Success - Circles border punch 

Lili of the Valley Little Nurse

I don't know what is going on lately, but it seems like I've been needing a lot of Get Well cards.  I purchased this Little Nurse stamp a while ago and hadn't used it yet but I thought it would be perfect to cheer someone up!

Supplies:
Stamp:  Lili of the Valley Little Nurse
Paper: Bo Bunny Double Dot
Punches: EK Success flower, Martha Stewart leaf, Punch Bunch fern leaf
Copics:  Sorry, but I didn't make note of the colors I used for this one :(