The Blossom Challenge: Inspired by the Sea

Welcome Power Poppy friends!  Today it’s Christine back with you, kicking off a brand new theme for The Blossom Challenge at Power Poppy!  

This month we have an Inspiration Challenge based on a photo from my recent trip to Northern California for work.  At a local friend’s recommendation we took a day off to head to the coast, driving through the Sonoma Valley wine country to a spot called Bodega Beach.  Its a sweet little coastal town with miles of beaches along the coastline.  It was such a stunning surprise with high cliffs, bluffs and pounding surf; you could believe you’re in Cornwall, England rather than the Cali coast.  The spot I took this picture was at Bodega Head where you are high on the bluffs looking down at the rugged coast above.  In the foreground you can see the vegetation with the pop of pink.  These plants are succulents called Sea Fig, and the flowers bloom a number of different colours.  Its an invasive plant in California, so they’re trying to control it, but it made for a beautiful picture!  

I’ve created two cards with this inspiration:  First up, a design inspired by the colours and plants in the photo.  

It’s a mini-slimline design using Power Poppy’s Gerbera Daisies Stamp set to mimic the flowers of the Sea Fig, colouring them in vivid pinks with my Copic Markers.  They are fussy cut and placed on a layered background with a die cut that I think imitates the sea fig vegetation.  A very FUN new find for me is the Lindy’s Magical Powders that I picked up which bring all the colour to that die cut!  These powders are dye based and activated in water, and result in gorgeous vibrant saturated colour and shimmer.  I think they really give the feel of the succulent vegetation and the colours of the sea.  

Here’s a view that helps you see how shimmery and shiny they are, and what awesome colour you are left with.  I’m going to be using them a lot in my future!  I’m using watercolour paper because it holds the moisture you need to activate the powders.  

The pretty little sentiment is from Power Poppy’s sentiment set, Nice Things to Say (in stock in polymer).  

Now I have a card that is very ocean forward.  

For this design I really took inspiration from the layout and colours in the picture.  I started with the background and used the same Lindy’s Magical Powders on watercolour paper to create sky, sea and ground with different powder colours, activited them with water and let them dry fully.  then I ran the background through an embossing folder I have that has the feel of the vegetation.  Next I brayered watered down white acrylic paint over the embossing to give the feeling of foamy waves and bring some highlight to the dimension of the embossing.  

For this beautiful sentiment I used one of my favourite Power Poppy sentiments M-Powering Words , embossed it with a metallic embossing powder in teal, trimmed it out and placed it on teal glitter paper and a layer of vellum.  Then, I accented the card with pretty dies from The Greetery Curio Summer Findings. 

Now I’ll leave you with the photo without graphics, and I hope this inspiration has taken you on a lovely journey to the sea!  

Join us in The Blossom Challenge this month to create something based on any part of this photo that inspires you.  Be as creative as you’d like!  You could win a $20 Gift Code for the Power Poppy store!  

I’ve added the picture without the graphics so you can visualize all of it for your inspiration.   Link up your creation below!

The only requirements are that you need to use one Power Poppy image or sentiment, and can enter as often as you like.  This Challenge runs until March 18th!  

Want to know who won our Clean Slate Challenge last month? We had some really fun entries!  This month,  Almeslee with her gorgeous Birthday rose was our winner!  Almeslee please contact Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com to claim your winners code! 

             You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Garden Dirt: Copic Marker Swatches for Power Poppy Stamps

Ready for a Citrus Punch?

Aloe and Oranges is a brand new digital stamp arriving this week at Power Poppy.

I’m here today with a bright, zesty, and totally unconventional Copic Marker blending combination to help you color it.

Hello, my name is Amy Shulke and I’m the illustrator and art instructor at VanillaArts.com. Welcome to my new feature series here at the blog; I’m calling this The Garden Dirt. 

Why dirt? We’ll get to that in a minute.

But first, I’ve got a whole series of artistic coloring articles here at the Power Poppy blog; here’s a quick link to a bunch of my previous articles.

Let's color an orange!

Today I’m showing you a close-up, tight shot of just one glorious orange. The entire Aloe and Oranges stamp has a lot more to color. This digital image will be available in the Power Poppy shop soon!

Confession time: I ate at least a half box of clementines during the week I worked on the full digital image. 

Fun fact: a trash can full of clementine peels makes your craft room smell divine!

I think this is the best orange in the digital stamp, it’s a juicy cut cross-section showing off the cute orange segments. It's perfect for fun texture details. I’ve colored the orange with a combination of Copic Markers and Prismacolor Premier Pencils.

So why would I name my color swatches after yucky dirty dirt?

Take a closer look. This isn’t just any old Copic color swatch.

In my freelance illustration work, I use a shading technique called Underpainting. I teach Copic Marker classes using this same technique. Instead of using a light, medium, and dark orange marker to color oranges or clementines, I deliberately throw in a clashing color to create a more realistic shade color.

The secret to my very dimensional orange rind is the green marker.

Where’s the green?

It’s UNDER the orange. That’s why we call this method underpainting. We’re using green to create the muddy, neutralized shade color that you’ll see on real oranges in real life.

Garden Dirt? Yep, we’re making dirty color!

Now to make this swatch work, you need to work dark to light. 

I know, I do everything backwards!

Start by adding YG63 with very light strokes to the shadiest areas of the orange rind. Don’t press too hard; you don’t need a lot of green to make this work. We want a little mud, not a swampy mess!

Then go over the YG63 with YR68, hiding the green completely. Let your orange strokes come out beyond the green strikes to create 2 colors— a dirty orange and a clean orange. Remember, no green is left uncoated! No-one should ever know it’s there. The rest of the world will think you used an ugly brick colored marker.

Now blend with the Y38 and Y35 just as you normally would.

Underpainting takes a bit of getting used to. The technique feels weird at first and the color looks even weirder… let’s call realistic shade an acquired taste. 

The funny thing is that once you get used to the color of real shade, you start to see it everywhere, all around you! Your entire life, you’ve been surrounded by murky colors, you just never noticed them.

Want to color Power Poppy’s “Aloe and Oranges” with me? 

Citrus Punch is part of the my Marker Painting Workshops series of online classes for intermediate to advanced Copic colorers. We broadcast the class live to show you real coloring in real time. I also take questions from the student audience. After the broadcast, you can watch and rewatch the class as many times as you want.

Can’t make the live session? No problem! We record and lightly edit every class. Purchase recorded Workshops at your convenience and enjoy anytime access.

Citrus Punch uses Power Poppy’s beautiful Aloe and Oranges digital stamp set.

You can find out more about Marker Painting Workshops here.

And I’ll see you back here next month for another fun color swatch!

Inspire Me Monday: A new use for those chisel nibs!

Hi Power Poppy peeps! We've got a special treat for you this Monday! One of our absolute favorite professional coloristas is here with us this week and guess what? She's flipping the lid on her Copic Markers to show us an ingenious way to use a part of the marker that doesn't often see the light of day. Amy Shulke from VanillaArts.com is working her magic to give a new and creative use for those Copic chisel nibs using Power Poppy's Gerbera Daisies.

Take it away Amy! 

TIP #1: Do you think of the chisel nib as "the refill end"? I'm about to color this entire image with just the chisel. I've concentrated the dark confetti strokes in patches rather than scattering them willy-nilly. This calms the background and will keep it from overpowering the flowers.


TIP #2:  Just because I'm using loose confetti type strokes doesn't mean I don't need accurate shade values. This dark purple will push the hand-drawn leaves deeper into the bouquet.

TIP #3: Coloring smaller areas with a chisel nib? I can get three distinct stroke shapes from the same nib using the broad side, the narrow side or just the corner. Narrow strokes and corner strokes fill the button shapes nicely.

TIP #4: A cast shadow always adds a sense of spatial depth and reality, even if most viewers never notice it.

TIP #5: I put off the yellow until last because I wasn't quite sure how deep of a yellow was necessary. By waiting until everything else was complete, I was able to make an educated decision rather than a random guess. I had set aside a darker group of yellows which turned out to be too similar to the background. Glad I waited!

TIP #6:  My pencil strokes either match the shape and size of the marker strokes or they're super soft and barely there. Accent the marker work, don't hide it.

Thanks so much for sharing Amy! I absolutely love the results and can't wait to create my own confetti background and chisel nib creation! For those that joined us today -- do you want to give this technique a whirl? Be sure to leave a link in the comments section if you do give it a try!

If you think you might need a little extra help pulling off this look, you're in luck! This Friday -- September 14 -- at 11 AM EST, you can join Amy for a LIVE lesson on how to control your chisel nib markers and discover what chisel nibs do best --  allow your inner artistic voice to shine!

Can't make the class, don't worry! Amy offers a recording immediately after the live broadcast ends and you can watch as many times as you want until March 1st, 2019! Want to know more? Just CLICK HERE for all the deets!

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Monday everyone!

Sometimes you can’t see the garden for the flowers

Hello and welcome to the Power Poppy Inspire Me Monday from Rhea.  It’s true that sometimes your eye fixates on just one object when there is so much beauty than surrounds it. The same is true when you are in the Power Poppy store! When I am looking at all those yummy flowers I see each one individually. Then I remember that when working with digi stamps, there are no limits! Just because I love love the Gerbera Daisies and the Winter Pick-Me-Up and they are individual images doesn't mean I can’t put them together to create a beautiful garden!

The images needed to be turned into a .png file so the background was transparent. They come to us in .jpg format. Being a .png allows me to layer them and position them front to back. All I use is Photoshop. I do not delete anything or alter Marcella’s art in any way. It is as simple as moving things around until you like what you see. You can “flip” an image which I did with the Winter Pick-Me-Up on the far right side. To do that in Photoshop, all you have to do is click on “Image” and then “Rotate” and click on “Flip Horizontal.” You don’t want everything looking too chimerical or it appears unnatural. I also like odd numbers.  

Now, I always like to share my color palettes! This way you can purchase the Gerbera Daisies, and the Winter Pick-Me-Up and use the same colors if you like.

Thanks for your time today!  I will be back Monday, August 3rd for another inspirational post.

~xo Rhea

May Day, May Day!

Do I post gigantic graphics, or what?

Happy May Day everybody! Can you think of a better way to celebrate the first of May than with a virtual garden tour? (Okay, a real garden tour would also be totes awesome, BUT for this flowery frolic you can be in your pajamas, sans make-up, perhaps with a bit of bedhead, and nobody will ever know! Ain’t the internet grand?)

OHHHH my goodness have the Bloom Brigade been ever-so-busy cultivating these magnificent cards for our ALL DIGITAL May release week. THANK YOU, THANK YOU to each of them, such gorgeous artists and beautiful people! I have been so impressed with their floral card creations all week — seriously, they make me want to stop everything and pull out my watercolors. It’s a bit chilly in St. Louis this morning, so I’ll save my peony-plant-progress-peeping until later in the day, and will instead run around this blog hop to see everything they’ve made.

A quick note before I do. All of the images used in the cards for our May “Instant Garden” release (Peonies, Tulips, Gerbera Daisies, and Gladioli) are available as high-resolution digital images — so after you buy the set, you’ll get an email with your images in it, and you can start creating your own crafty garden right away! How cool is that? Again I say: Ain’t the internet grand?

So let’s get this May Day instant garden tour underway, and I hope you’ll visit each of our charming Bloom Brigade designer’s blogs for inspiration—PLUS—we have a special visit from the oh-so-delightful creative phenom, Dina Kowal. Today rules!!!!

THE BLOOM BRIGADE’S MAY DAY INSTANT GARDEN TOUR

Allison Cope
Christine Okken
Cindy Lawrence
Danielle Kennedy
Dawn Burnworth
Dina Kowal
Julie Koerber
Kathy Jones
Katie Sims
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker

And thank you so much to everyone who’s been following our release this week, many of you have been Instant Gardening with us already! We have so many fun surprises in store this month—and I can’t wait to be all up in it myself! From new challenges to helpful tips to Pinterest action, there will be lots of ways to share this botanical bounty together!

I truly appreciate all of the support and lovely emails and comments you have been sharing with me. I feel very privileged to be a part of this creative community. :)