Tag: loose peonies

Guest Designer: Marika Rahtu

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Hello! I’m over the moon excited to be a guest designer here over at The Ton blog. First, I’d like to thank Effie for inviting me, it’s really been an honor for me. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.

TONGuestPostMarikaRahtuwithoutwatermark1

I had so many ideas while I was going through the stamps to use for this guest post and for this first post, I decided to go for this beautiful set called Loose Peonies. I really fell in love for this Peony stamp set since it is so realistic. Unfortunately, the spring still awaits to come here in Finland so I can only dream of these beautiful blooms. While waiting the summer to come, I had fun colouring these dreamful blooms. I used my go-to-coloring method – copic markers combined with coloured pencils. For the sentiment, I used a stamp from The Ton’s It’s Cray Cray set.

TONGuestPostMarikaRahtuwithoutwatermark2

I started by stamping the flowers and the leaves with light pink ink. Any light ink will quite well do, I chose to use light pink since I thought the lightest parts would be on the flower. Then I first laid the copic layers and added details with pencils. If you want to use the same colours as I used, I list the colors below.

Copic Markers: G20 – G43 – RV0000 – RV000 – V000 – V01

Faber Castell Polychromo Pencils: Ivory (103), Light Magenta (119), Pink Madder Lake (129), White (720), Earth Green Yellowish (168), Earth Green (172), Juniper Green (165), Warm Gray (270).

Hope you like what I created for this first guest post. Please, stay tuned for the two more to come!

Have a wonderful day!

Marika

Trying new things…

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Hi friends! Emily here with you today. My post is brought to you by my newly determined effort to try new things. Today, I’m trying to use stamps in my arsenal that are under-loved, as well as getting a taste of some new paper to use with my Zig markers.

I wanted my focus today to be on the Morning Glory Garden background stamp. I absolutely adore this stamp, and it’s one that I haven’t used nearly as much as I’d like. So I pulled it out and heat embossed it on some of my favorite watercolor paper, then watercolored it with palest blue, purple, and pink Zig markers and my wet paintbrush.

The Ton Morning Glory Circle WM

My next step was to take an A2 panel of pale gray card stock and die cut a circle in the upper center using the Double Stitched Circle dies. I then used dimensional adhesive to pop up the frame, adding a flagged strip of white card stock that had been stamped with this lovely sentiment from Timeless Icons using Smoky Quartz ink. Some Smoked Amethyst, Light Blue Topaz, and Glass Slippers sequins scattered about finished it off and added just a hint of sparkle.

The Ton Morning Glory circle detail WM

This next card is a little different for me, in both layout and technique. Now, I’ve been on the search for the perfect watercolor card stock to use with The Ton’s background stamps since the day after I received my first background stamp (the Peony Garden background). I wanted something smooth that would still take the color and the water beautifully, but would also allow the solid areas to heat emboss cleanly. You can see that the texture of the watercolor paper in the photo above didn’t really give me that perfectly smoothly embossed solid morning glory.  I’ve experimented with different brands, different weights, hot vs cold press…. but I’ve never tried Smooth Bristol, because it isn’t technically watercolor paper. Well, I’m here to tell you… for the background stamps from The Ton, it’s completely perfect. It’s also a nice, bright white, which makes me really happy.

The Ton Morning Glory window WM

I heat embossed the Morning Glory Garden background again on an A2 sized sheet of Smooth Bristol card stock, then colored it the same way I normally would with my Zig markers and wet paintbrush. (For me, the key is to move quickly before the color has a chance to seep into the paper and be unwilling to move with the wet paintbrush. As long as I move quickly, the color moves almost as well as it does with normal watercolor paper. Score!) I colored the morning glories in more shades of pale pink, blue, and purple, then heat embossed a few of the single morning glories from Wild Morning Glories and colored them with coordinating Zig markers, then fussy cut them out.

The Ton Morning Glory window detail WM

I cut two strips of the same pale gray card stock from the previous card, then popped them up on either side of the watercolored panel. (I was a little sad to cover up so much of the pretty flowers, but the design wants what the design wants.) The sentiment, from Loose Peonies, was stamped again using Smoky Quartz ink on a strip of white card stock. I adhered the loose morning glories down so that they were peeking out from behind the sentiment strip, then added a few Glass Slippers sequins to create a nice visual cascade down the front of the card.

The Ton Morning Glory Both WM

And there you have it! Two nice and clean cards, both with a little dimension to add some more interest. I hope you’ve enjoyed my post today and find some of my tips useful! Happy Thursday, friends!

Black and White Florals

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Good morning!  Jess here with a black and white peony card!  I know I know…the lack of pink is totally foreign to me, too! 😉  I’ve seen so many beautiful cards recently using the new peony stamps from The Ton and I just kinda wanted to see what they would look like without any color at all.  I was very pleased to discover that they’re just as gorgeous in stark black and white!

For this card I used the Loose Peonies stamp set.  When I was working on my card last week I had stamped and heat-embossed a bunch of flowers and leaves from the set and had a few leftover that I decided to use for this card.  The flowers are stamped with versafine and heat-embossed with clear embossing powder before being cut out with my ScanNCut.  Then I stamped more of the flowers and leaves on black cardstock with versamark and heat-embossed them with white embossing powder.  I adhered the white leaves and flower with a mixture of regular adhesive and foam mounting tape for dimension.  Next I stamped the sentiment on a piece of black cardstock, heat-embossed it with white embossing powder, and trimmed it down to a banner.  I layered it over a piece of white cardstock so that it would stand out a little more and adhered it to the card with foam mounting tape.  I really like the way this card turned out because you could easily add color to the flower and get a totally different look or stamp it on colored cardstock for a different effect!  I’m definitely a fan of pink and coral flowers but I like this black and white look, too! 😉

Thanks so much for visiting and have a wonderful day!

jess

MOMs love peonies. I hope.

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Mother’s Day is in less than a week. Now, my mom is one of my favorite people, so coming up with a card that isn’t too schmaltzy but still adequately says what I’m thinking is always hard to come by. Not so when you can make your own!

I love having an alphabet set with a fantastic font that is chic yet very legible, and the Vogue Alpha sets fit that bill perfectly. I used the Vogue Alpha Upper set to customize the sentiment from It’s Cray Cray and created my own Mother’s Day sentiment. I wanted to let the flowers overlap the sentiment a bit to “frame” the sentiment, so I stamped everything in Versarmark and heat embossed it in clear. I used the smaller peony image from Sending Peonies, then filled in some of the space around it with foliage images from Mini Wild Florals.

The Ton Mother's Day peonies WM

I think I must have been a florist in a past life, because I just love building bouquets. The images from Mini Wild Florals are perfectly proportioned to that gorgeous smaller peony image, and I love the effect mixing the two sets has. I colored the outline images in with my Zig Clean Color Markers and a wet paintbrush, then went around the edge of the stamped images with a pale minty Zig marker and blended out the color with a wet paintbrush to create a halo effect. So simple, but it really adds something to the card. The last step was to die cut my panel using the largest rectangle from the Stitched Rectangle dies to give that nice stitched border.

The Ton Mother's Day purple peonies

My next project was inspired by the cover of a calendar I saw in Hobby Lobby. There is something so beautifully classic about pink flowers and black and white stripes… Just gorgeous. I stamped all of the floral images from Happiest of Peonies and Loose Peonies (LOVE that they coordinate so perfectly!) using Versafine and clear embossing powder onto a sheet of Strathmore 500 Series Cold Press watercolor paper. I then used my Zig markers in three shades of a rosy pink and a wet paintbrush to color them in and add shading. Now, the least fun part: fussy cutting all of those gorgeous flowers. As much as I grumbled about it, it really didn’t take that much time and it was totally worth it.

The Ton Stripes and Peonies WM

After stamping my Haute Stripes onto a piece of 4×5.5 inch card stock (I wanted it to look slightly tall and thin, so I shaved that 1/4 inch off of the side) using Noir ink, I arranged my peonies cascading down the side and used Press ‘n Seal to pick them up before adding adhesive, then while still stuck to the Press ‘n Seal, reapplying them to the striped card stock. (That tip is seriously so fantastic. I have wasted so much time in the past trying to perfectly arrange my bouquet according to the picture I took with my phone, and this is such a time saver. If you don’t have any Press ‘n Seal in your craft room, get some ASAP!)

The Ton Stripes and Peonies detail WM

I heat embossed the sentiment from Happiest of Peonies using Platinum embossing powder, then added just a few sequins from the Don’t Make Me Blush Couture Mix.

Well, that’s all for me today! I hope you have a fantastic week and, for the moms out there, a wonderfully happy Mother’s Day!

Oh, happy day!!

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Good morning, friends! Emily here with you today to share a pair of cards that I intended to get made for the blog hop last week, but didn’t quite have the time to finish them. Both are using our new peony stamps (shocker) and my Zig watercolor markers (even bigger shocker). Let’s get started!

This first project was inspired by a catalog that I received from a paper goods store. The cover had a cascade of tissue paper peonies dripping diagonally down the front, and I knew I had to recreate it with my stamps. I started with a 5.5×5.5 inch panel of white card stock that I stamped with the Haute Stripes background stamp using Blue Diamond ink. My next step was to stamp the large “happy” sentiment from Brushed: Happy using Versamark ink  on some heavy vellum with some pretty cornflower blue embossing powder that I found in my stash. I fussy cut it and set it aside. The Ton Happy Wedding full size WM

Next came the super fun part: the peonies. The Happiest of Peonies and Loose Peonies sets are a perfect match for each other. (They’re the same images, but in different sizes. Yay!) In order to create my little swag for the corner, I simply heat embossed all of the floral images from both sets onto watercolor paper (my current favorite is Canson Montval Cold Press) using Versamark and white satin pearl embossing powder from my stash. I love pink and pale blue together, so I decided to color the blooms in various shades of cool pinks using my Zig markers and wet paintbrush. After they were dry, I simply arranged them on my card base and used a new trick I’ve just learned about to adhere them to my card base: Glad Press ‘n Seal. You simply place the Press ‘n Seal over your arranged bouquet, lift it up and flip it over, add your adhesive, then flip it back over onto your card base. I used scor-tape on my blooms, so I didn’t have to worry about dry time. I added my vellum sentiment using 1/8 inch scor-tape (it fits perfectly behind the “fat” lines on the sentiment) and added the “wedding” portion of my sentiment (also from Brushed: Happy) using Parisian Blue dye ink. The final touch was a few Light Blue Topaz sequins scattered here and there amongst the blooms. If I had it to do over again, I think I would have arranged the blooms in more of an ombre cascade, but c’est la vie.

The Ton Happy Wedding detail WM

My next project is inspired by a technique I’ve seen floating about on Instagram. To start, you heat emboss a piece of vellum with a lined image (like this one from Happiest of Peonies), then stamp it again on your card base in the same spot, so that you can lay your vellum over top of the card base and your image on the card base will show through as a very muted version of the image. I heat embossed this image in the corner of my A2 vellum panel using white satin pearl embossing powder, but if and when I do it again, I will use regular white EP or perhaps silver. I embossed the sentiment (from Fresh Cut Orchid) with platinum embossing powder.

The Ton Vellum overlay WM

I had created a top-folding card base using some Strathmore cold press 500 series watercolor paper, and so stamped my image from Happiest of Peonies in the same spot as on the vellum using some neon purple waterproof ink. Because the colors that show through the vellum are going to be far more muted than they are on the paper, I chose to use purple and fuchsia Zig markers so that the colors would still somewhat maintain their vibrant shade. After coloring the blooms, I outlined everything with a pale sky blue Zig marker and spread the color around with lots of water.

The Ton Vellum Overlay Detail WM

The final step was to adhere the vellum panel to the card base, making certain to align the outline image up with the stamped and colored image on the card base. I placed a strip of 1/8″ scor-tape along the top fold of the card base, then adhered my vellum to it. I covered it up with a strip of glitter tape in a complementary shade of pink.

Well, that’s all for me today! I’m so thrilled that Effie has added more peonies to our line up, because they are the most fun stamps to play with in my craft room! Have a fantastic week, friends!