Newsflash – I’m doing a live on the Stamp Anniething Stampers Page at 11 E.S.T or 4 G.M.T. today – 9th January 2021! It will be a demo on how to use fur technique to colour up a clover flower! Join me?
Notes for the Live –
Main Post!
So excited to share a fantastic GDT opportunity I had working with the team at Stamp Anniething on their new release of “Annie’s Garden“. Four beautiful stamp sets with some really useful sentiments, and all a pleasure to colour up! As normal everything is coloured with Faber Castell Polychromo Pencils.
I am going to chat about each one, so it’s a bit of a long post, but I don’t want to miss any bits out! First off we have Bumble Bee and Roses. I love bumble bees, they are furry insects, and you know how I feel about fur!
As normal, I went online and found some photos of bees and yellow roses. I love taking my textures and colours from the real thing, and then using that to inspire how I colour the stamp. I really love my garden and am a real plant nerd, so I wanted to get some of the details right. They are beautifully drawn images, I needed to do them justice!
I wanted to colour up these images just using the pencils, but I did pop a bit of smudged white gel pen on his wings.. they needed… lifting? My favourite bit are the three leaves furthest left though. I always like hearing what bits other artists are proud of, so thought I would share too 🙂
Next up is Lady Bugs and Clover! I am a big fan of ladybirds (as well as bumble bees). I always love finding them in my garden, tackling my green fly. I really tried to capture the right kind of green for the Clover, so it would be perfect for making the red shells on the ladybirds pop! I am in the U.K. so I am allowed to call them ladybirds, don’t come for me 😉
I left the ladybirds til last to colour, I normally save the top most layer til last, so all the underneath colours are done, then it doesn’t matter if I cover them up a bit. They were entirely red until the very last moment, then I just dabbed the black on. I am always a bit afraid of going in with pure black but it’s often the final touch that makes an image looks complete.
Onto the third stamp, we don’t get Monarch butterflies in the UK so I really had to do a bit of research before I started to colour. I am interested in butterflies but don’t often colour them. This stamp is called Monarch and Daisies. All the pattern is already in the stamp, so I think it would hard to go wrong with this one. Also, no need to go with the classic colours, I bet butterflies and daisies would work whatever colours you chose.
Colouring white flowers was a bit of a challenge. They have almost every colour in them as well as white. They came together when I added the final darkest shades, tho adding dark shade to white petals feels very counter-intuitive!
We don’t get humming birds in the UK either, but I think I am a bit obsessed! The fourth and final stamp is Humming Bird & Morning Glory. Gosh, they are super amazing little creatures! As before I hunted round for some inspo on line, the colours and textures on the humming bird were really fun to do, and not that hard once I knew the colours I needed to include. I do feathers the same as fur (and Clover flowers, lol!) just lots of fine downwards strokes.
I have done more of a close up in the second photo so you can see all the lines. If you have a photo to refer to you can see in what direction you can flick your lines, once you have them going in the right direction, it looks much like feathers! It just take a while to build them up, but tbh, he looked very pretty with just a single layer of rainbow colours. This stamp made me want to try and grow Morning Glory next year! My friend Fiki grows it on the front of her house and it’s gorgeous!
Just as a note, all the sentiments come in the same set as the flower they accompany. There are more than one sentiment with each set, so a few handy options. I used papers and sequins from my stash and used smooth kraft cardstock to colour on.
Okies, so that was the set of four stamps! What do you think? Aren’t they beautiful images to work with? I enjoyed having a little push out of my comfort zone too. I am really excited to see what the rest of the DT do with them! (Click here if you are interested too! The super talented team are doing some “lives” using the stamps, it’s going to be really interesting to see them in watercolour and Copics and pencils!) I would definitely try them again in a different media.
Thanks for joining me for this veerrrrrrryyyy long post 🙂 Hope I’ve left you feeling inspired or spendy 😉
You could check out the Stamp Anniething Instagram if you fancy a little distraction? 😉
Cartway Cards 