Forever Plaid

We're still celebrating PLAID at Jingle Belles and you're still invited to join the fun! This week I broke out my ColorBurst pigment powders and brushes of various size to paint a fun, slightly wonky plaid* design of my very own in shades of pink, red and yellow. Then I traced a set of oversized metallic letters to make a HUGE custom sentiment and layered it over several layers of patterned paper including a super-cool My Mind's Eye plaid from a year or two ago. This might not be the busiest card I've ever made, but it's probably pretty close, lol!

Hand-painted plaid might be more effort than you'd do for a holiday card; but on the other hand, it is one of my favorite things to do with watercolors or markers! If you're intrigued by the idea, I hope you'll try it some time. This flip-style video on my Instagram account from a few years ago shows the basic steps, which are, briefly: 

1. Paint or draw parallel stripes of one color across your paper. 

2. Change direction and paint stripes of a different width, perpendicular to the first set. 

3. Alternate these steps until you have a plaid design you like. 

4. Add outlines, dots, faux stitches, real stitches or anything else that takes your fancy. Hand painted plaids make awesome backgrounds or wonderfully unique diecuts! 

Of course there are also LOTS of beautiful stamps, stencils, ribbons, washi tapes and patterned papers which are already plaid, and that'll give you a head start on making a card to link up with us at Jingle Belles. Be sure to hop over and see Stephanie's card for this week, as well.

Happy Turkey Day!

Whether you're celebrating or not, I hope that everyone 

who sees this will have a wonderful day! 

♥♥♥ 

Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice

If you've guessed that this fortnight's challenge at Shopping Our Stash is a celebration of all things autumnal, then well done! You don't need to include a literal pumpkin (though of course you can!) just channel thoughts of Fall, Halloween or Thanksgiving and that should point you in the right direction. Here's what I made:

A couple of years ago, I made this card that featured a chevron-patterned background made from LOTS of leftover patterned paper scraps, cut into skinny strips. A couple of weeks ago, I saw that card again and was inspired to make more of those backgrounds. I couldn't decide whether to go darker or lighter, so I made one of each!

Both cards feature ColorBursted, collaged and diecut leaves (an ancient set of Provocraft dies from Cuttlebug days that I still use a lot!); machine stitching, tiny paper flowers, Prima Pretty Pale leftovers, and the perfect orange mats from Simply Stories' (older) We Are Family collection, which I may have liberated from the Paper Anthology scrap bag!

Wend your way over to SOS to see what the rest of the design team darlings have created, and start planning your own awesome autumnal masterpiece!

Cardstock Christmas (the long way 'round!)

Presenting the absolutely slowest and least efficient way to comply with this fortnight's Jingle Belles ban on commercial patterned paper. Unless... you really, reallllllllly feel like doodling at a time when what you actually need to do is make a holiday card. 

As a matter of fact, one of the things I especially love doodling is snowflakes, although irl, they never turn out to be classically elegant like the ones I imagine, they're usually a bit wonky, as you can see! I drew all of the basic shapes on Strathmore Watercolor Paper with my thinnest Pitt Artist Pen (XS= extra superfine, it's .1mm); then smooshed Cerulean and Violet ColorBurst on top. When the panel was absolutely bone dry... (if you use a heatgun, be sure to dry the back as well as the front; watercolor paper has long fibers and the core of the paper can still be damp!) ...I added details with a slightly heavier Pitt (.3mm) and with a few sizes of white Posca Pen. To finish the whole thing, I selectively painted on Frosted Lace Stickles and added Hero Arts Enamel Dots in several sizes and shades of aqua, before machine stitching the panel to a mat of divine white Non-Shed Glitter Paper from Paper Anthology, a larger mat of dark teal cardstock, and a white A9 card.

Visit Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's beautiful Cardstock Christmas Card and link up your own beautiful creation!

Holiday Cards to Die For!

We're embracing the joys of diecutting this fortnight at Jingle Belles, so break out your nested label shapes, your stamp-and-die combos, your beautiful background dies or all of the above! For those who have not embraced the format, we'll also accept cards that use old school paper punches as well as electronic systems like Cricut, Silhouette, etc, so there's no excuse not to join the fun!

I absolutely love this Hero Arts Holly Confetti Cover Die, so it's a bit of a mystery why I don't use it more? That's what I love about card challenges... it spurs me on to use items I've been neglecting. I made a funky smooshed background using Lime, Pthalo Green and Turquoise ColorBurst, and layered the diecut panel over some ancient dark green velvet paper. I made a flower and snowflake stack using pre-packaged diecut snowflakes as well as some Tim Holtz Tattered Snowflakes, sandwiched between layers of fabric flowers. The brad at the center is so old I'm not sure where it's from, but it actually has tiny holly leaves so I could not resist!

Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's beautiful card and start planning what you will link up!

Anniversary Card Round-Up

In addition to hostessing, I also made cards for a few of Elisabeth, Shari and Linda's challenges in the Paper Anthology 9th Anniversary festivities. And here they are now:

To CASE Elisabeth's beautiful holiday card I chose a similar medium woodgrain background paper, dark green mat and a kraft cardbase. I used lots of foliage dies, plus some pretty Penny Black Pinecones. My sentiment is a slightly different shape, but I've tried to echo the corner element by placing it a bit higher.

I chose the bottom row of Linda's fun Tic-Tac-Toe board and combined about five different diecuts, some Lawn Fawn variegated twine and a plaid I hand-painted using Olive, Terre Vert, Chartreuse and Sepia ColorBurst. 

Clean and Simple cards are definitely not my metier, but I was determined to have a go at Shari's CAS with a Spin challenge. The "spin" is that you cannot use white or cream, which turns out to be harder than I thought! Luckily I had Spellbinders' Kaleidoscope Tiles die set to be my focal point and some Lawn Fawn Woodgrain cardstock to give all that (non-white) white space a bit of texture.

Many thanks to everyone who played along this weekend, there is still a bit of time to finish up challenges, answer trivia and poll questions... all of which earns you tickets for the big raffle drawing! Everything you need to know is on the Paper Anthology FaceBook Page.

Tic-Tac-Toe

We're playing our favorite crafty challenge game this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash. To join the fun, simply choose any horizontal row, vertical column or diagonal line from the board and include those three items in your project.

I selected the middle row of string/twine/yarn + stamp over 5 years old + bright colors, and this is how my card turned out:

I smooshed droplets of Cerulean and Lemon Yellow ColorBurst randomly over a piece of watercolor paper and let the colors mix and mingle at the edges. When the panel was completely dry, I used a bunch of older stamps (see pic below; the Newton's Nook set might only be 2-3 years old, but the rest are 5+ for sure!) to add patterns in tone-on-tone colors of Distress Oxide Inks (Fossilized Amber, Cracked Pistacio, Salty Ocean and Peacock Feathers to be precise). I stamped Dina Wakley's handsome Scribbly Birdie in black archival ink on a second panel of smooshed-then-dried ColorBurst (this one mixed Fuchsia with Yellow Ochre, plus a bit of splatter on top) and fussycut. A salmony-orange mat, some pale blue cord, machine stitching and a Dymo label sentiment round things off nicely.

Be sure to visit SOS and see the design team tic-tac-toe creations, then start planning what you will make!

A Few "Extra" Cards

Just a few pics that have been languishing on my computer's desktop so I figured I'd post and file them. By the way, to anyone who asks, "Why are you still blogging, when all the action is on social media now?" I reply, "A month from now, when you want to find one specific project quickly, would you like to scroll for all eternity through your feed, waiting for it to load each set of nine photos; or jump into Blogger's dashboard and use the search feature?" Plus I have the luxury of recording all the product I've used AND tagging the post so that I can easily make a group of say, collage projects, or cards that have brads, or ink blending, or stencils, or... well, you get the idea. Having said all of that, I tried Blogger's appalling new format last week (YIKES!) and if they don't fix their diabolically nested toolbar or allow the "Legacy" format to be used indefinitely, I may change my mind about the whole deal.

But for now, lookie, there are cards! :)

This is a "Clean Up Collage": basically when I take all of the random scraps on my worktable and instead of throwing them out or putting them away, I make a random collage. Usually I do this in my sketchbook, but since I had a focal point and everything, I made a card.

(ps: these leftovers are all from one project involving StencilGirl stencils, that I'm really excited about but can't reveal yet... hehehe... sorry to be cryptic, lol...)

Here's a baby card for a new family member who arrived earlier this year. I had intended to use it as an Eyelet Outlet project; then I realized that BOTH the sweet prams and the pink teddies had gone out of inventory... 

I was trying to draw hydrangeas on scraps of watercolor paper from a class kit I put together for Paper Anthology. These came out well enough that I decided to paint them with ColorBurst. I considered using this as my CAS card for SOS but then I realized it isn't very "stashy" is it...

♥♥♥

The Penultimate Week of ICAD?

Already? It seems that July flew past even faster than June, which was already pretty quick. I don't want to wish the summer away, but I could *definitely* do without the oppressive humidity that central NJ is currently experiencing. It's normal for the time of year, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, lol. I do like making art on index cards, however; and here are the ones I made this week:

day 48: what the duck?

this is the world's fastest collage, made very late at night, using the tray of pre-cut-out collage bits that i save for emergencies. so yeah... it's a weird combo, but i kinda like it...

day 49: off-prompt cut-out window collage

i saw a cool collage... ummmm  somewhere... that had a window cut out, so the top layer was only a thin frame around the rest of the collage. i'm quite sure you'll be seeing additional versions of this idea!!!

day 50: international postage rainbow

yep, off-prompt again. and still totally in love with rainbows of any description...

day 51: flower doodle extravaganza

this background, as well as the one from the rose frame, and the next two upcoming cards; were all smooshed colorburst on thick divider cards that i made randomly, just because it's fun to smoosh colorburst. sometimes i have a specific idea in mind, sometimes i just play and see what happens. this was the latter, lol.

day 52: hopscotch, redux

the little girl was a pre-cut-out element; the dominoes were in a crossword/variety puzzle book. 

day 53: blue or blueberry

colorburst + doodles = joy ♥

day 54: outline

this is an older julie balzer stencil from TCW that my friend anna found in a box of miscellaneous stuff at the ink pad. of course, she had me at "hawaii" lol; but as it turns out, my favorite thing about this card is the idea of tracing the stencil design very neatly, coloring it, and then adding a SECOND, messier, outline. again... i feel quite certain this is an idea you'll be seeing more of!

♥♥♥

hope this week treated you well and that you'll have some fun and crafty time over the weekend!

Cavalcade of ICADs

Another week has marched its way past, I hope it was a good one for you! Here are my index cards for the week:

day 41: scribble stick rainbow

i spent the afternoon taking dina wakley's amazing "focus on scribble sticks" class via facebook so of course my ICAD had to reflect that fact!

day 42: gradient

blended oxides on a library card... avec vintage poisson from an old book!

day 43: octopus mandala monday

ok, it's definitely an octopus, just not that much of a mandala, lol.

day 44: life on mars

a one-staple collage based on the fact that our nightly viewing this week has been a re-watch of the bbc's awesome 1970's flashback crime drama, "life on mars".

day 45: off prompt

i had never heard of an "ogee" pattern until ICAD c. 2015, but now i love drawing them. this one is funky and floral.

day 46: diagram

a very loose and random collage of an electrical schematic and bits of map atop maria mcguire's "doodle it geometric landscape" stencil from stencilgirl!

day 47: off prompt collage

i realized at 11:45pm that i had not posted, or indeed MADE an index card for the day. hence i got out the tray with all the pre-cut collage bits and assembled this in literally 10 minutes. weirdly enough... i kinda love it! :)

Another Week Flies Past...

...and it's time to celebrate Fourth of July already? Seriously, HOW did that happen?! Of course this also means that we are just a tiny smidge past the halfway point of ICAD's 61 glorious days. Here are this week's index cards:

day 27: cappuccino

i've always wanted to try drawing fancy coffee-top art and this seemed like the perfect occasion. i lightly sketched in pencil, added color with sepia, violet and prussian blue colorburst, then outlined with my faber-castell pitt artist pens.

day 28: off-prompt

test driving a new stencilgirl stencil called stepping stone #1 by maria mcguire. I used dry oxide inks in the background, then wet them and watercolored the design. then added lots of outlines and doodles.

day 29: citrus

combining the actual prompt of the day with mandala monday. this one is in citrus colors (WITHOUT any black outline... hard for me not to add that lol...) with some of my newer favorite pens from the ink pad. on a swedish library card that came from a swap with my IG friend, ellen.

day 30: souvenir

...or at least souvenir was my starting point; in the end, this became a sort of historical/travel themed collage... and i'm cool with that...

day 31: off-prompt

a somewhat vaguely nautical one-staple collage. with a manatee. and sequins.

(let's not analyse this too much lol...)

day 32: off-prompt

inspired by an amazing mosaic/wedge collage my friend cyndie reis made last week. mine uses the leftover papers that were sitting out from my manatee collage. the found text is from a spanish language childrens book and reads, "sometimes lightning jumps from a cloud to the earth".  

day 33: periwinkle

one of the few days i have done the prompt ON THE DAY; go, me! ok so, i started off with small funky periwinkles which promptly got overshadowed by large funky orange guys. it happens, lol; let's just go with it.

♥♥♥

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

to everyone who is celebrating!

(and Happy Weekend to everyone else!)

ICAD-ing Along

Here's this week's worth of conveniently-sized index card art from ICAD2020 which I've been sharing daily on my Instagram; if you'd like to check out the prompts or other info it's all here in the Blog section of  Daisy Yellow Art!

day 20: birdhouse

my SOS dt sister and ICAD buddy mimi shared a big, luscious stack of library catalog cards with me and a few she had even *watercolored* like this beautiful green one. it made the perfect home for a little collage inspired by the super-songful house wren whom i met at my friend anna's house! 

(because YES, i went OUT, to a place!) 

day 21: robot

i should probably mention that i've been doing whichever prompt appeals to me on whatever day i have an idea. so my numbering system is different than the official, 100% optional, list. this one features (surprise!) another awesome library card with a vintage illustration and some fun cloud doodles.

day 22: mandala monday

i was running out of tabbed index card dividers, but the only plain manilla ones on staples' website came in a box of 100. i hemmed and hawed, but since i do love them for watercoloring and i figured i could share a bunch with my nieces, i caved and got them. SO happy i did, because they are best ones i've ever found, they can be colorbursted to my heart's content without buckling! ♥

day 23: geode

or possibly "sparkly cabbage" would be a better name, lol? definitely a fun combination of  chartreuse, lime and turquoise colorburst, plus some verdigris liquid metal. outlined with a golden tinou glitter marker and my trusty faber-castell pitt pens.

day 24: terrarium

i based my drawing on artwork i found via google image search, which i somehow neglected to save, and now cannot re-find to give credit. (sorry!)

day 25: emerald

there are probably too many ideas here, lol. basically i had a FAB new stencil called "doodle it geometric landscape" by maria mcguire, for StencilGirl, and i couldn't wait to play with it! :)

day 26: bougainvillea

the old saying that you really haven't SEEN something properly until you've tried to draw it is definitely true! for example, bougainvillea have veined petals in clusters of threes, with a sort of center trough, and a tiny white flower center surrounding some yellow pollenny stuff. not sure i captured any of that... but thanks to ColorBurst in shades of peony, alizarin crimson and gamboge i think i managed the huge hit of color pretty accurately, at least. 

♥♥♥

hope you are having a fun and creative last saturday of june!

I'm an ICAD-ian

...and you can be too, all you need is a stack of index cards! No need to catch up; no need to follow the prompts (but they're HERE if you want them); absolutely ANY creative media is fair game. This week I mostly felt like doodling... next week it might all be collage or stencil creations or... who knows?

day 6: dreamcatcher

i'm not in love with my proportions here, but my first attempt at drawing a dreamcatcher was definitely fun, so i predict you'll be seeing more in future.

day 7: highway

like the song says: life is an abstract, zendoodle highway, am i right?

day 8: suzani pattern

yes, i had to google "suzani" and the amazing tapestries i found may 

have sparked a bit of an obsession. just sayin'...

day 9: bookcase

i was planning to do something much more abstract, but this 

unexpectedly became quite a literal bookcase, which is fine.

day 10: david bowie

i may come back to this prompt, because i feel like i didn't come up with an awesome concept. i went sort of blank, so i just drew a stylized diamond-ish pattern based on my second favorite bowie song, "diamond dogs". i like it but it doesn't seem bowie-ish enough somehow...

day 11: off prompt

i had an idea for "tiramisu" which you may see later on, but on this particular day i had brought home some amazing new glitter markers the ink pad is carrying and so i had to play with them.

day 12: brocade

is it wrong that i now want some pillows 

made from my wonky indian-inspired brocade pattern??

♥♥♥