This Little Piggy - Danced a little jig

For our June my fab friend Kelly Acheson in the USA has chosen No Line Watercolouring for our technique in our international Stampin' Up! demonstrator blog hop.  I haven't used this technique very often so I'm learning with you.  I am quite happy with my Little Piggy dancing a jig though. I teamed my watercoloured image with one of the new Heirloom embossing folders and it's coordinating Heirloom framelit.  They are really easy to use and create either an oval or rectangular frame which could be used for cards like this or photo frames or scrapbooking.  The possibilities are endless. I created my frame with my new fave colour Pretty Peacock and matted it onto a Very Vanilla embossed layer too.  This was embossed with the 3D Tin Tile folder.   

To show you the basics of no line watercolouring I have taken some pictures whilst using the technique with this pot of paintbrushes from Stampin' Up! set Crafting Forever.  

Step 1

Ink your stamp with a very pale colour like Sahara Sand or Petal Pink. Stamp off on grid paper a couple of times leaving very little ink on your stamp and then stamp onto watercolour or shimmery white paper.  

Step 2
You'll have an only just visible image and you can now use ink from the inside of your ink pad lids to colour your image.  You may need to blend colours on an acetate sheet or clear block.  I find that painting the section I wish to colour first with water only from my aqua painter then allows the ink to flow and cover the moistened section.  You can remove excess water with a paper towel.

Step 3

You can once you've finished a section dry your image with a heat tool to set the colour.  

You can then come back and add shading neat ink that you can wash with the aqua painter to create shading. 

This is where I come unstuck as I'm not very patient and you need to be to build up the coloured sections and complete the image. 

You need to try to work on sections not connected to avoid bleeding of the colours so with this image move from one paintbrush on the right to another on the left and so on.  Mop off excess water and revisit each section when dry.  I also find having one aqua painter for just adding water and one for adding ink works well.  You can clean the inky one on kitchen paper between colours.  It is very satisfying and for me will need more practice, but you can become a faux artist and have fun colouring in.

Please visit the other ladies in the hop as I know some of them will be far more skilful than me. To see their designs click on each picture link below. 

Thanks for visiting and I'll be back with more designs and tips soon. 

Happy crafting 

Zoe x

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Thinking Outside the Box - We're making folded envelopes

It's time for the June Thinking Outside the Box Design Team Blog Hop.  Welcome to the team's share of folded envelope tutorials.  I've gone for the very simple and well known 'diaper' pouch which sounds marginally better as a tutorial name than a 'nappy' pouch but it is an easy, easy project and one I regularly share with ladies groups or indeed with children as they love paper folding and also the fact that treats go inside this cute packaging.

Step 1
So to get started all you need is a square of patterned or indeed plain paper.  You'll see I have done two versions one for kids and one for the grown ups. The smaller kids pouch started as a piece of 4" x 4" designer series paper.  The adult version is a piece that is 6" x 6".

Step 2

Fold your piece of paper diagonally to form a triangle.

Step 3

Taking the top layer of the paper fold the top point down towards the fold leaving a gap of 1/2" (1cm) approximately. 

Step 4

Fold the flap you created back up to the triangle postion then bring in one side of the triangle to run along the fold created by the flap in stage 3. 

Step 5

Do the same with the other side.

Step 6 

Bring the flap created earlier down over the top finishing the pouch. 

Step 7 

Decorate your pouch

For my decoration I have used the new Stampin' Up!  Floral Essence stamp set.  I stamped the large outline flower onto whisper white card with Blackberry Bliss ink. Before it dried too much I used an aqua painted to carefully pull in some of the outline ink to colour the flower.  It gives a watercolour effect. I heat embossed the centre of the flower with gold embossing powder and punched it out before again using the aqua painter to just colour the remaining smidges of white card.  You can dab off excess ink and water with a paper towel.

TIP Keep the flow of water in the aqua painter to the minimum as it is only ordinary card and you could get bubbles and soggy card.  If you prefer use watercolour paper. 

The leaves were stamped onto Perennial Essence vellum with Old Olive ink  and punched out with the leaf punch.

These pounches are great for table favours for any event and depending on your paper size you can add a gift of choice.  I've added a mini handcream.

For the children you can make mini pouches and snip a small triangle at the bottom to all for a lolly stick to be slotted through the bottom.  This too was decorated with Floral Essence  with the flower and leaves being stamped and the leaves coloured in the same way as above.

 I hope you'll give them a try and don't forget to visit the other global Stampin' Up! demonstrators to see their tutorials and inspo for you.

To shop for any of the products used you can visit my Stampin' Up! online shop.

Thanks for stopping by Stampingscene today.

Happy crafting
Zoe x

1. Tanja Kolar

2. Zoe Tant - You're Here

3. Annette Elias

4. Beate Wacker

5. Aude Barbara

6. Barb Stewart

7. Fiona Carson