Category: Penny Black

Penny Black Indian Wheel Background Stamp

I recently got my hands on the Penny Black Indian Wheel background stamp and wanted to create some simple cards pairing the stunning background with sentiments from the Friendship set.

For the first card, I stayed with a neutral color palette.

Penny Black Indian Wheel Background Stamp

I tried several different inks on the kraft paper before choosing Toffee Crunch. I dyed the ribbon with a Distress Ink pad. I have most of the ink pads but not all of the stains. While I love this color, and the ability to custom match ribbon color, I’m not sure I recommend using the pads, as the ribbon took a long time to dry. Going forward, I’ll purchase stains for the colors I most want to create. (More on this later as I’m investigating the differences in the formulations of the stains vs. the pads.)

For the second card I used one of my favorite color combinations – red, white, and blue – and heat embossed the sentiment. I’d like to try this card with a rope “ribbon” or white ribbon for even more of a nautical look, maybe even a little anchor charm :-)!

Penny Black Indian Wheel Background Stamp

Supplies:

Penny Black Hedgie

The hedgehog is one of the first images I came to associate with Penny Black stamps. And there just happens to be a hedgehog in the Garden Critters set!

Penny Black Hedgie

I colored the hedgehog and flowers with watercolor pencils and combined them with a sentiment from the Friendship set.

I purchased some more Penny Blacks sets that I plan to ink up tomorrow, including some images suitable for Father’s Day cards.

Another Garden Critter

I got the opportunity over the weekend to continue playing with the watercolor pencils and the Penny Black Garden Critters stamp set.

Penny Black Garden Critters

I watched Jill Foster’s PB & J video several more times, and learned a bit more about how to use the pencils. I also switched watercolor papers to a heavier paper that is preferred by Jennifer McGuire. Additionally, I used my water brush pen as a brush dipping it into the water. Filled with water, the brush was putting too much water on my image. I don’t have any Penny Black sentiments, yet, so I added one of my most used sentiments from the Hero Arts Essential Messages set to finish off the card.

Happy Monday!

A Rabbit “Hello”

I bought some Derwent Inktense watercolors pencils on Sunday (my Mother’s Day gift to me, ha ha) and spent most of Sunday afternoon and into the week coloring the critters from the Penny Black Garden Critters stamp set.

I’ve watched Jill Foster’s PB & J video several times, and I am in total awe of her skills! If you’re interested in trying out watercolor pencils, her video would be an excellent place to begin.

A Rabbit "Hello"

Garden Critter

Have you heard? Ellen Hutson is now carrying Penny Black stamp sets! I inked up a cute stamp from Garden Critters (my first ever Penny Black set). The set is part of the Margaret Sherry Collection; she is also the illustrator of the adorable Penny Black hedgehog.

Penny Black Garden Critter

I followed the same design of Kristina Werner’s that I used to make this card during the Online Card Classes Clean & Simple Card Making 2 course.

I colored the image with Copic markers, deciding, as I often do, that there are Copics I don’t own which would have been better color choices (I could own all of the E’s for example)! I spent a good deal of the weekend researching coloring techniques and combinations, as well as reading the blogs of talented artists including Kathy Racoosin, Elizabeth Allan and Jill Foster. I’m looking forward to trying out watercolor pencils as a next step!

Copics: N1, BG72 (shovel); YG03, YG17 (leaves); R12, R24 (boots); E000, E31, E35 (mouse); RV10, RV23 (flower, pink on mouse); YR31, Y11 (flower center); B21, B23 (butterfly)