Thursday, March 30, 2017

Crafter in The Spotlight 43 - Itsy Bitsy

Hello arty-crafty folks,

Thursday is here again! Today I will introduce you to another passionate crafter for our weekly ‘Crafter in the Spotlight’. This week the lime light is on Riddhi Jani, a talented crafter who is originally from Ahmedabad, residing in Pune but is soon moving to the ‘City of Dreams’… Mumbai!!

Riddhi has completed her B. Sc with Biotechnology and feels that art runs in her blood. She loved painting since childhood but never imagined she would take up crafting as a career.

Some of Riddhi’s favourite are scrapbooking, paper crafting and mix media. She feels, Itsy Bitsy offers the best price and is the perfect place for craft shopping.

How did Riddhi get into crafting, what inspires her, what are her tips for fellow crafters, her favourite quote, how would she contribute to the crafting world if she had magical powers? Read answers to all these questions, discover more about her interesting journey and catch a glimpse of a step by step project by Riddhi in this interview. Don’t forget to leave your comments for her.

Here are excerpts of my interview with Riddhi Jani:

Rashmi Closepet, MD, Itsy Bitsy: Tell us a bit about yourself & your background?

Riddhi Jani: Hello everyone! Thanks Rashmi ma'am and Anitha ma'am for this wonderful platform. I'm grateful that Itsy Bitsy gave me this chance.

Before I tell you something about myself, I would like to thank Itsy Bitsy for choosing me. It’s like a dream come true ❤. I'm Riddhi Jani from Ahmedabad but right now I am in Pune. Most probably I will be shifting to Mumbai this week end. Though I have completed B. Sc with Biotechnology, art is in my blood. I can't stay without craft. I like o paint, sing and a dance a bit as well. Hey, forget to tell you that I'm a big big panipuri fan....lol 😜. I love to listen to music when I'm alone. Mostly, I like listening to slow songs with deep meaning.

RC: How did you get into crafting?

RJ: From my very childhood I loved to paint...But frankly telling you guys, I never imagined it as a career. It’s only possible because of my loving husband and mummy (mom-in-law). Without them, it would not have been possible. Really, words cannot explain the importance of craft in my life. I just can't stay without craft. I think every craft-y person feels like I do. Right guys?

RC: What is your favourite type of craft?

RJ: Hmm...Mainly, I like to do scrapbooking and paper crafting. But I like to work with mix media projects also.

RC: What are your favourite products at Itsy Bitsy?

RJ: Itsy Bitsy is like a perfect place for crafty shopping and with best price 😊. Though I love each and every product from the store, my favourites are Flowers, DCWV papers, Jute sheets and Butterflies.

RC: If you had magical powers, how would you contribute to the Crafting world?

RJ: If I had magical powers, I would like to change some thoughts about art in common people who do not value art and artists. Artists obviously work for money but more than that, artists want true appreciation. Am I right guys??

RC: Your prized possession in your craft stash from Itsy Bitsy?

RJ: All the flowers, pattern papers and stickers❤

RC: How would you describe your style of crafting?

RJ: I will call it unique ❤ as I believe all craft-y folks have their own style...and they are unique in their own way 😊

RC: How do you organize your time for crafting?

RJ: I really wish I can craft all day...I have a little boy who is 18 months old. So, I only craft while he is sleeping. Therefore I can hardly craft for 2-3 hours. At this stage my family supports me a lot, if my baby wakes up, mummy or my husband handles him so I can complete my projects 😊 It really means so much to me. ❤

RC: Tips for people who want to craft

RJ: Craft from the heart guys…It’s not about crafting…I think it's about crafting with feelings ❤

RC: Your all-time favourite quote?

RJ: "Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations ❤"

Here is a gorgeous project by Riddhi & step by step description:

For the project you need all this stuff which is in the image.

Step-1

Take 4 ice cream sticks and fix them with the help of any strong glue.

Step-2
Fix 2 more sticks on top of the 1st layer. Then take 4 more sticks and arrange 3 of them in same line and cut 1 ice cream stick in to 3 parts. Then fix it just as shown in the image.

Step-3

Arrange it as shown in image. So it will make a little stand for our frame.

Step-4

Pick a colour of your choice. As I'm using one of my favourite colours from the store only. Let it dry, then, stick pattern paper to give the background a nice look.

Step-5
Give a little bit of shading on the first layer of the colour. I am using this pretty sentiment sticker from the store.

Step-6
Pick choice of flowers. I feel incomplete without flowers for my projects. Thanks Itsy Bitsy for the wide range of flowers within budget. I love them 😄

And yes it's ready!!! 😄

Here are a couple of Riddhi's other awesome creations:

Many congrats Riddhi for being the CRAFTER IN THE SPOTLIGHT – ITSY BITSY!!

You will receive Rs.500/- Itsy Bitsy gift voucher 😊😊 & a Crafter in the Spotlight badge, which can be proudly displayed on the side bar of your blog and other platforms. Looking forward to many more creations, Happy Crafting!

Easy Watercolor Cards

Hello everyone, it's Juhi and today I'm sharing 3 watercolor cards.

Watercoloring is one of my favorite techniques, you'd be surprised to know that it is not as hard as it looks, at least not the watercoloring I'm going to show you in today's post. What I really like about watercoloring on cards is that you don't need any fancy supplies to make beautiful cards. I'll be using the Berry Special Stamp set from Itsy Bitsy and Mont Marte Tube Watercolor paints for my cards.

I love how the images and sentiments work together in the Berry Special stamp set.

Card #1:

Here are the steps of making this card.

1. Begin by stamping the beetroot from the stamp set on watercolor paper using black pigment ink. Take care to rotate the stamp and also stamp off the edge of the watercolor panel, this will create a random beetroot pattern.

2. Watercolor the beetroots, do not color all the way through, leave some white space in each beetroot. I mixed a bit of Violet in Crimson from the Mont Marte Watercolor Tubes to create the beetroot color. Don't worry about coloring within the lines. Coloring a little outside the lines creates a beautiful watercolor effect.

3. Once the colors are dry, take a wet brush and spread the color over the white areas in the beetroots. Take care to keep the color lighter than the rest of the beet in these areas. This lighter area represents the part where light is falling on the beets.

4. Color the leaves. I used a mix of Sap Green and Yellow.

5. Spread out the color at the outlines of the beetroots with a wet brush and your watercolor background is ready.

6. For the front panel, stamp a single beetroot in the middle of the watercolor panel and color it in the same way as the background beets.

7. Stamp the sentiment, cut to size and adhere the background panel and front panel on white cardstock base with double sided foam tape.

Card #2

I tried no line watercoloring on this one, it was very easy to do and I am very happy with the results. Here's how I did it.

1. Stamp the olive from the stamp set with Crushed Olive Distress ink. As distress inks are not waterproof, watercoloring on it will remove the stamped outlines and we'll get no line watercoloring.

2. Leave some white space in each olive and color the rest in.

3. Once dry, spread the color with a wet brush.

4. Color in the leaves and add some paint splatters to finish the background.

5. I wanted a color coordinated cardstock base but did not have any, so I just painted the edges of my white cardstock base using the same color as the olives. I know it looks messy right now, but trust me it'll look great once the card is finished.

6. Finish the card by sticking the watercolor panel on the card stock base and stamping the sentiment on a strip of white cardstock.

Card #3

Putting my 3rd card together was very quick and easy. I first stamped the watermelon slice randomly on a piece of white cardstock using red chalk ink. Then, I stamped the slice on watercolor paper , watercolored it and cut it out. Finished the card by mounting it on the cardstock base and adding the sentiment.

I hope you enjoyed how I made these cards, I certainly enjoyed making these. Watercolor CAS cards are my all time favorite projects! Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Supplies Used:

CLEAR STAMPS BERRY SPECIAL	WATER COLOUR PAINT	PIGMENT INK PAD BLACK	CHALK INK PAD RED
DISTRESS INK PAD CRUSHED OLIVE	CARD STOCK BRIGHT WHITE	GALLERY SERIES BRUSH SET WATER COLOUR	ACRYLIC STAMPING BLOCK
SCRAP BOOKING GLUE

InLinkz.com

Monday, March 27, 2017

Clean and Simple cards with Itsybitsy Chalkpaints

Hello girls, Angela back again with some simple cards made using Itsy Bitsy Chalk Paints.
Most of you might already have bought the entire collection of Itsy Bitsy chalk paints and already many posts have covered their usage, tips and tricks. So lets dive right into the post !

I made three different cards and for all the three cards, I have used chalk paint as background elements and "Happy bird-day" stamp for foreground element.

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For the first one, I wanted to use the scallop circle die from Itsy Bitsy so, I made a simple brushstroke background on my base cardstock and placed the scallop circle die cut on it. I used a flat brush from Monte Marte gallery series for acrylic paints for making the strokes. I used frozen ice shade on a white background to represent sky. Then I used various floral elements with little birdie on the scallop die.

The flowers and leaves are clear stamps that I stamped with Memento Dewdrop ink pads and Itsy Bitsy pigment inks. I colored the little birdie with Camlin drawing inks. Once all the coloring were done, I fussy cut all of them and adhered everything together to the card base with double sided foam dots.

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For the second card, I used a smaller size round brush from the same series to make tiny heart shapes with Itsy Bitsy chalk paint in pink ballet shade to fill the background area on a black cardstock.

I cut out a sentiment strip from Pretty in Pink pattern paper set and used it in the card along with a fussy cut little birdie.

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For the third card, I used a geometric pattern stencil from Itsy Bitsy and covered the entire area of the card with chalk paint in the Fortune Cookie shade. I wanted to have a slightly raised look so I did not dilute the chalk paint while applying over the stencil.

For the sentiments, I cut out a small strip of cardstock and stamped "Hello" in lighter shade and highlighted the "Hello" with black ink. I adhered this strip to the base of the card with a double sided tape for 3D effect and placed a fussy cut little birdie.

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Did you like these simple cards? Now you know how versatile chalkpaints are. Have fun unleashing your creativity with these chalkpaints :) |
Happy crafting!

Supplies used for card 1 :