It’s a sketch challenge over at AAA Cards blog this week – use the supplied card outline to inspire your design with the optional theme of ‘thankful’. My card is possibly the quickest and simplest I have done for the design team and I’m wondering if it will be inspiring or not! Still, it keeps to the sketch and is clean and simple so it counts 🙂
The next challenge at Less is More is to make a one-layer card using a self-drawn frame. I went a bit mad and hand-drew the whole thing. The finished piece looks like it is layered because of shading using an alcohol marker on the bottom edge of the mandala – a very effective way of adding depth without layers. The background is a masked, dense layer of blended distress ink over which I’ve used a black pigment marker and Stabilo pencils for shading.
A tough challenge this week at AAA Cards blog – 1/9th. The idea is that all the elements on the card fit into a rectangle only 1/9th of the card area. Up to now, I’ve met the challenge following the guide image on the blog, which is in a grid pattern. This time, I’ve used a rectangle across the page in a landscape format 1/9th the height of the card. Within it, I have drawn and coloured my gnomes along with trees – all of which together look suspiciously like a Christmas card. Given at the time of making and writing the temperature here in Leicester is a roasting 39ºC, it was the furthest thing from my mind!
I’ve procrastinated a bit on my homework for this section as I and watercolours often do not get on well together. The lessons have been great on Wanderlust 2022, with each of the tutors carefully and patiently explaining the techniques they use so that they are, in the main, replicable. Here are my results from weeks 29-35…
Various mixed media techniques on papers other than watercolour paper have generally worked ok. I still haven’t fallen in love with watercolours as a medium, but am glad I have tried them. Oh, and buying decent tube watercolours made such a difference to the vibrancy of the colours over the student quality hard pan collections I normally use.
Apparently, World Cardmaking Day is held every first Saturday of October and is dedicated to those that prefer to make cards rather than buy them. In honour of this, the latest challenge at Less is More is to make a CAS card on the theme of friendship. I made the following card, and I’m not sure I like it! I think that the blue shading around the top and bottom of the rose detracts from the clean and simple aesthetic.
I’ve been asked by my Bible journaling session guests to teach them some coloured pencil techniques at our next class (10th October). Let me know if you’d like to attend and I’ll give you all the details. We’ll explore gradients, texture and shading to illustrate verses in our wide-margin Bibles on the theme of prayer:
A free downloadable PDF template for each of the verses is available from my shop, here.
A new challenge has just been published over at the AAA Cards challenge blog. This time, it is to create a clean and simple card using a colour theme set by a photo with the optional extra of using dots. I picked out the primary four colours from the inspiration photo and spent a bit of time matching them to archival ink colours before stamping them onto white card using the same dotty stamp. Now, I usually avoid layers on my CAS cards, but most guidelines specify no or few layers so I feel I can get away with two. I like the individual pieces’ drop shadows and the depth they provide.
This ended up being a fast and simple card once I had chosen the stamps! The challenge over at Less is More for the next fortnight is to create a clean and simple card using just black and white. I was tempted to add shades of grey as shadows and to add some depth but decided it wouldn’t meet the challenge.
Here’s a clean and simple card design for a no layer sympathy card. It’s the latest theme over at AAA Cards. No layers means exactly that – all the elements need to be on the card blank, no matting and no embellishments (which count as a layer). They are one of the trickiest challenges to do. My card is just about the simplest I have made!
The recipe challenge this week over at Less is More is to use vellum in your clean and simple card design/make. One of the trickiest things is to find a means of attaching it to the card without the glue showing as a darker area given its translucency. I’ve got around this by taping a fold-over flap to the inside of the card. I found the flower in a long-neglected box of Pergamano parchment craft. I mounted it on black to get the right contrast for the white of the stretched vellum. The sentiment is stamped in white pigment ink several times to get it opaque.
