Fifteen Minute Dragon Bookmark

Hello friends! It's Jes today.  If you didn't know, Kris and I are co-admins for the Sweet Stamp Shop Fan Club on Facebook. We recently started a book club for our members, and we're reading the Harry Potter series together.  Everyone is making adorable bookmarks, and I was inspired to make a set of my own.

I started out by watercoloring a sheet of Canson Watercolor paper. I taped it down to my desk to minimize warping so I could get it good and wet.  I used a few distress inks that I had on hand.  Then once it dried, (I was impatient and heat set it with my heat tool) I stamped out a few Dragons from one of my favorite sets from Sweet Stamp Shop. I used Memento Ink in Tuxedo Black, because I wasn't sure if I was going to water color the dragons, and Memento doesn't bleed.

Once I had them all stamped out I used a T-Square Ruler and a fine tipped Sharpie to draw in the shape of my bookmarks. I liked how it looked right under the wings best, but when I do this again, I'll bring the lines out to the tips of the wings. I think that will make cutting and popping the image to clip in the books easier, and more attractive. 

Next, I tried to be all fancy and cut the whole thing out with my Gyro-Cut tool. Don't do this. It takes forever with this paper. Cut it all out with scissors and then you can use the gyro for the detail cutting later on. 

I chose to color them after they were cut out, you can color before or after, it doesn't make any difference.  Isn't he so cute? I colored him in with a couple of Tombow markers, but you could use any coloring medium. I also outlined the whole thing with black markers just to give a clean edge.  *Note, the backside looks pretty gnarly, but by adding the long rectangle on the bottom it makes these easy to line up, so you could have the dragon dude on the front and the back.  I'm going to play around with it a bit, and I might update this later if I come up with an idea I like.

Here is the hard part.  To make the little dragon hold your page like this, you have to cut in pretty close.  I used my gyro for this, and then cut all the way up to his shoulder and his neck to give him as much room as possible to hook on the page.

I used the tip of the gyro tool to push the arms out after cutting them, and then bent them back a bit so that they would stay popped out and I wouldn't have to do it again every time I wanted to mark a page.

His arms are very tiny and he doesn't hold the page well when he was cut like this, so I experimented really quick and decided to cut out his body. This works well, but the tail was so close to the edge of the frame that I nearly cut through it, and it's still very fragile. I mentioned above that it might be a good idea to have the frame for the bookmark start at the tips of the dragon's wings. This is why. It would give room to cut around the tail without risking the integrity of the bookmark.

Both look adorable, and I'll definitely use both. Just play around a bit and see what you like best.  They will also work well as regular bookmarks. 

If you liked these let me know in the comments. We're also taking requests for projects.  If you have something you'd like to learn to do, let us know in the comment section and we'll do our very best to post a tutorial soon.  Also, don't forget to follow us on IG: @teachplancraft and @jes_planning.  Drop us a comment and let us know you're coming from the blog! Thanks for reading! 

Watercolor Divider for Personal Sized Planner

Hello! It's Jes, back again with another fun craft.  I woke up with a nasty headache, that has lingered all day. I needed a simple craft that I could do on the couch and didn't have to think about too hard.  Sure, I could have pushed this post off till tomorrow, but I've been working hard to meet my posting goals, and I wasn't going to let a headache ruin my solid streak.  I decided to make a simple but fun dashboard for my new personal sized planner.  Here is a look at one a did a few days ago, just for fun.

I used Count Down and College Plans from Sweet Stamp Shop to create that divider.  I just stamped, colored, cut, and glued. Then added the sentiments from Count Down. The tab is from the Labels and Tabs set from Studio L2E.

For today's project I decided to do a simple watercolor dashboard and spruce it up with a single sunflower.

Supplies needed:
Watercolor Paper
Markers or watercolor paints (I used Tombows)
A hole punch
Water Brushes (or a brush and cup of water)
Stamps and ink

I have this Canson Mixed Media notebook, that I used to pre-stamp all of my favorite stamps. I can toss it in a bag with a few markers or colored pencils and color on the go, or while watching TV.  So, I just tore the sunflower page out to work with today.  The sunflower stamp is from the Our Friendship Grows set by Lawn Fawn.

I absolutely hate to measure. I don't know why, but I do. So I just traced the last divider I made, and slid it down the page a bit to put the tab where I wanted it.

 Next, I laid down a solid foundation of color in an ombre pattern. Then, I spritzed it well with a little mini mister bottle I picked up from Walmart ages ago. I wanted it good and wet. Using an old dry rag, I soaked up all the excess water, and lifted a bit of the color off, because it was too dark for what I wanted.
While my divider was sitting to the side drying, I colored in my sunflower and pot.

I wasn't thrilled with the way the pot turned out, and ended up coloring over it again with my tombows before I attached it to my divider. I cut these out using my amazing Gyro-Cut tool (seriously if you don't have one GET IT! Then come back and tell me I was right and you adore it :D ). I love that I can fussy cut detailed images in such a short time, and get such clean lines. 

 

See? It's awesome, right? When you're finished admiring how neatly that cuts, we'll move on. I'll wait. 

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Ready? Next up, I attached the flowers and flowerpot to my divider.  I ended up sketching in a stem and leaves, because I wanted smaller leaves and a smaller stem than what are provided in the set. 

So, glue them down nice and snug, and you're ready to hole punch.  This was actually a bit flimsy for my tastes, so I went ahead and traced it on a piece of heavy card stock and then adhered it to the thicker piece to give it the sturdy feel I prefer.  Finally, I grabbed an insert from my planner to line up the holes (my six hole punch doesn't work and I need a new one) and punched out my holes.  Then, I just popped it in my planner and I was ready to go.  From start to finish, including drying time this took about 35 minutes.

Do you love this? Hate it? Do you have any questions, or thoughts, or tips? Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think.  I love comments, and will respond to all of them!

Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @jes_planning. 

Not All Crafts Are Wins

Hey everyone. It's Jes again. I'm here today with a set of fail cards.  Have you ever sat down to craft and ended up messing up every single project? That was me today. I forgot about Mother's Day this weekend, and have spent the day trying to come up with two cards to send to my mother and mother in law. After several failed attempts I realized that it just wasn't going to happen today.

The first several attempts were crumpled up and thrown away. The last few that I'll show here were ones that I thought I might be able to salvage.

 This one here isn't terrible, my biggest fail here, was using the wrong paper.  I used regular cardstock, which worked well with the embossing, but didn't like my watercolor attempt at all. What you see here is after several minutes of trying to flatten it out after it completely crumpled in on itself. I might cut it down and paste it on another piece of card stock.

Tip #1: Know your materials. In crafting (at least for me) last minute additions don't often work out.  If you're using plain cardstock, watercoloring will not work.

This one actually looks fairly pretty. A few things about it bother me though. For one, black background and Mother's Day don't really go together. I thought I'd try something out of the box and ended up really disliking the final effect.  This black cardstock was extremely flimsy too, which made the card feel very cheap. The final thing about it that caused it to end up in the fail pile is the fact that it is off centered. The bottom part can be salvaged for a congratulations card down the road. 

Tips #2 and 3: Invest in good quality card stock. The cheaper stuff just doesn't hold up well, and flimsy cards feel like the folded printer paper cards we used to make as kids.  Using little pencil marks to mark the center of the paper is helpful and you don't end up (usually) with images that are not lined up. 

In this last one, the mistakes were just flukes. I'll be redoing this card tomorrow and using more caution.  The first mistake was the two different colors for the vine and the leaves. It just throws it off a bit.  Second, I smudged it really bad by pulling up my stencil before the leaves were completely dry. The final mistake, was when I pulled up the tape holding it to my table. It ripped the top part of my card.  If it had just been any one of the mistakes, I probably would have finished the card and sent it anyway, but all three was just too sloppy for me to use. Bonus win: I finally used the right paper!

Tip #4: Be patient.  If you try to pull up your stencils or tape too soon, your watercolors will smudge or run together giving you a muddy look. 

My final tip is: Don't get discouraged. Sometimes craft projects just don't work the way you pictured. Take a break and try again later.

Thanks for reading. If I end up with a set of cards that turns out tomorrow, I'll add a new post. 

Wedding Card Featuring Lawn Fawn

Hello everyone. It's Jes again, here today with a fun wedding card I put together for a friend. I leave early Saturday morning to take my first train trip across country for a wedding. I wanted a fun card that reminded me of my friend, but that was fairly simple, since most of my craft supplies are packed in my bag.

My supplies include:

      Bake Me A Cake from Lawn Fawn
      Home Sweet Home also from Lawn Fawn
      Pray For Us (the small boy and girl) from Sweet Stamp Shop
      Black Licorice Ink from Lawn Fawn
      Papers from one of the Let's Polka collection from Lawn Fawn, (the ones I used are retired now)
      A Gyro-Cut from Amazon
      And some Tombow markers.

The first thing I did, was stamp out the cake bits from Bake Me A Cake on different patterned papers. I made sure to alternate the sizes on the papers so that my final project would be turquoise/yellow/turquoise/yellow which are the wedding colors. I pulled in a bit of pink paper as an accent color. This will be the stand, and later a little Congrats banner on the cake.

I didn't want to leave my background plain white, so I used my tombows and some watercolor paper to add a fun smooshed background. (Here is the link to my Ink Smooshing tutorial.)

Next up, I had to cut out all my cake layers. I love my little gyro tool for cutting out stamped images.  It's the next best thing to having a die cut machine. Kristine has a great little example clip of the gyro in action on her IG, @teachplancraft. Once my paper was dry, I adhered it to my card base, then added my cake pieces. 

I thought it looked a little plan still, so I pulled out the mini boy and girl from the Sweet Stamp Shop Pray For Us set and turned them into a bride and groom. Those itty bitty things were HARD to cut out! But definitely worth it in the end. They tied the whole card together.  

Thanks for reading! I'll be back on May 2nd with a post about my DIY travel journal, and how I used it to plan my upcoming trip, and document my first train trip.  :) 

A Homemade Card with Brusho Watercolors

Hey, everyone!  It's Kristine with you again today, and I've got a tutorial for you on Brusho watercolor powders.  Now, I did a post awhile back on those and how fabulous they are, but today I've got a VIDEO for you so you can actually see them in action.  They are amazing!! I made a card for a friend of mine, and start to finish, the whole thing took 20 minutes.  Did I say amazing already?  Amazing!  And it's a totally unique look.

Here's the link to the video.  Hope you enjoy it and are inspired to try Brusho for yourself!

Hi, everyone, and Happy Hump Day!  It's Kristine with you on the blog today, to talk about my newest love - Brusho watercolor powders!  Have you seen these powders in action?  If you have no idea what they are, do yourself a favor and run over to YouTube and check them out.  Go ahead, I'll wait here patiently until you're back.


<singing a song>


<checking email>


<scrolling through IG>


Oh, there you are!  Did you see them? Did you watch a video or two? Aren't watercolor powders, like, the MOST AMAZING thing you have ever seen? I watched one video on them and knew I had to have them.  I bought a set of 12 on Amazon for about $32, I think.  (They also come in sets of 24 and 8 - I got the 12 because I didn't know how much I would love them.  I wish I had gotten the 24!) You need only a miniscule amount each time you use them, so they will last FOREVER.  A great crafty investment!

So once I got my powders, I knew I wanted to swatch them.  Because many of the colors are actually made up of different color powders, I wanted to be able to see the swatches any time so I'd know if the color I was reaching for would give me the effect I wanted.  Here's what my final swatches ended up looking like:

I mean, seriously, how gorgeous are those?  Let me walk you through the steps of making the swatches, and you can see them in action.

First off, here's what the containers of powder look like:

Now, they have a pull tab on the side that you can use to separate the top from the container, BUT YOU DO NOT WANT TO OPEN IT!!!  I know, it seems weird to not open the container - how do you get the powder out otherwise?  Well, I saw on a video by Sandy Allnock (are you following her?  You need to - she's amazing!) how she stuck a push pin through the top of the container to make a teeny hole for shaking the powder out, using the pin itself to keep the container sealed when not in use, and I gotta say, it's brilliant.  BRILLIANT.  I've seen photos on IG of people who have taken the tops off to use their powder - and let's just say that every time they use it, they and everything else within a 5-foot radius is COVERED in watercolor powder.  Kids, that is NOT a good crafty investment!  Really, all you need is this bitty hole and you are good to go.

So to make my swatches, I first cut 12 pieces of watercolor paper into 3-inch squares and taped them down on my large cutting mat with washi tape.  This was to keep the color from running all over the place and also to keep the paper from buckling too much once the water hit it.

Next, I sprinkled a wee bit of powder onto each square, using a different color for each.  And when I say a wee bit, I mean a wee bit!

Once the papers were all sprinkled, I used an old travel-sized Chloraseptic mister bottle to spritz water onto each square.  (You can buy mister bottles and mini-mister bottles, but why do that when the Chloraseptic bottle worked so well?  I will say this, if you choose to use a bottle you already have lying around the house - pick one that sprays in a fairly fine mist.  Large droplets and streams will just create puddles and rivulets of water that run off the page.) As soon as the water hits the powder, the magic happens!

This is the leaf green sample.  See how there are yellow, green, and even a few blue and orange looking bits in there?  That's how the powder is comprised.  Now, I could mix the powder and some water together in a bowl and get a solid light green, and use it with a brush like regular watercolors.  But for me, the magic in this stuff is how some of the colors stay separated in their component colors when lightly misted.  So I wanted my swatches to reflect that.

Here's the whole mat with all 12 swatches misted:

Once misted, I gave the swatches a couple of minutes to partially dry - just enough so that any puddles got pretty well soaked into the paper.  Then, because I am impatient, I got out my heat gun and helped them along.

Once all the swatches were dry to the touch, I took the washi tape off, covered the whole thing with a piece of white paper, and laid a few heavy books on top for an hour or so, just to make sure they were dry and to help them flatten out a bit.

Using Sweet Stamp Shop's Mixed Alpha set, I stamped the name of each color at the top of each swatch.

And then I laid them all out and admired them!

And then I punched holes in the corners and put them all on a ring and admired them again!

And finally, I hung them from the craft carousel that lives in the middle of my craft table, so they're in easy reach whenever I want to use the powders and need to see the colors. (I admire them there, too.)

Other than the swatches, I've used these powders to make an amazing card that I unfortunately can't show you right now - cryptic, right?! - but will be featured in an upcoming post.  So stay tuned!  And meanwhile, have fun playing!!

Kristine  :-)

Hey everyone, it's Jes today, back with a fun watercolored set of cards! Happy first day of spring! Here in Indiana it's a lovely (read: freezing) sunny day, with a high of 43 degrees.  A perfect day to stay inside and craft.  Today, I'm going to show you a set of cards that I made to keep in my bag.  I've often wished I had a pretty, blank card for various occasions, but never seemed to have one on hand. That inspired me to make this set of cards to have on hand.

This is what my final four looked like. There were five, but I really messed up on one, badly! I gave that one to my daughter.  For this project you'll need watercolor paper (cut to size), a pretty stamp set, card bases of your choice, embossing powder and ink, a heat tool, and your favorite watercolor medium (I like to use tombow markers and water brushes). 

(see below for links to everything I used.)

I chose to use the Flutterby stamp set from Lawn Fawn for my decorations.  The cards are from Michaels. When I got this stamp set I knew it would be perfect for embossing and watercoloring. I loved all the detail.   

Step one: Emboss a pretty design in the bottom corner of each pre-cut piece of water color paper. I used a silver embossing powder from the Michael's Recollection collection.  Stamp the image with the embossing ink of your choice, sprinkle the powder on, and heat set. I love the shimmery look of this powder. I like to work in sections when I'm doing multiple cards.  Here are all the cards after embossing.  (See the blue one? That's the one that became a major fail. Maybe someday I'll do a #fail blog post just for kicks.) 

My next step was to add a water colored background on each card.  I found a technique on Youtube (link below) called ink smooshing and I couldn't wait to try it.  I used my fiskars stamp press as a base. I scribbled on it with my Tombow markers. Make sure to leave the corner where your design is blank. Then, sprinkle some water on the stamp press just to wet the colors and make it easy to transfer. 

Lay your paper over the ink and press down. Leave it a few seconds to really soak up the water.  Then, peal it off very carefully. There will be some water pooling on the edges.  Just dab it off with a paper towel.  

I like to let my cards dry a bit before I tape them down to my work surface. That way, the color on the corners doesn't come up or pool when I take the tape off later.  It is much easier to color the designs if your project is taped down. 

Next, I used my tombow markers and water brushes to add color to each of the flowers and butterflies on the cards.  

This part was kind of time consuming, but it was my favorite part.  I got braver and experimented more with color as I moved from card to card.  Here is a close up of each of the final four cards. 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you liked this project. If you try it out, leave me a comment and let me see your final designs!  

Supplies: 

    Stamps-  Flutterby from Lawn Fawn

    Paper - Canson Watercolor Paper

    Ink -  Versamark

    Embossing Powder - Recollections Sparkle Powder

    Card Bases - Craft Smith: Textured Cards

    Stamp Press - Fiskars

    Markers - Tombows

    Water Brushes - Pentel Arts