Jackie's June Creations - A Layout and A Mixed Media Gift Bag and Card

Hello Blue Fern Studios Fans! Jackie with you today to share my June Blue Fern Studios projects. I've had a blast playing with the new Ombre Dreams papers, and I have two Ombre Dreams projects to share with you today, but I'd like to start off with a very dimensional layout using Blue Fern Gardens.

I've mentioned before how much I love the thickness of these papers (and if you haven't had a chance to pick up some Ombre Dreams paper, they are printed on the same paper) because of how well they take media, and I've piled it on again here, with gesso, mists, inks and watercolour paints.

I matted my photo collage using two layers of Blue Fern chipboard, starting with one of the Beaded Strings circles. I painted it with a thick gesso (because I find super heavy gesso spreads so much easier with better coverage), then added some touches of watercolour paints, and then added a bit more gesso once those were dry to tone everything down a little. I also added some grey ink to the outside for definition.

The second layer of my photo mat is one of the Quatrefoil Garden Panels. I cut it in half lengthwise so that I could have a border both on top of and below my photos, and painted it with a shimmery acrylic paint.

To create a horizon line across my page, I used a piece of one of the Jeweled Page Dangles left over from another project. The links are coloured with chalk ink, and I used some of the shimmery watercolour paint I used on the page to colour the flower, and topped it with some bling.

Blue Fern Studios Products Used:

- Blue Fern Garden: Picnic

- Blue Fern Chipboard: Beaded Strings, Jeweled Page Dangles, Quatrefoil Garden Panels

With Father's Day just around the corner, I set out to make a masculine gift bag, though in the end it turned out a little too colourful to be truly masculine, but I love it!

I combined Blue Fern Garden and Ombre Dream papers for this one; they work so well together! After I built my base layers, I added strips and squares I cut from scrap pieces and the cut-away strips at the bottom of the papers, and added random colour to the sides of all of these.

I then added stencilling, stamping and splattering to the background along with some sewing thread.

I coloured the Grand Balloon Chippy with several different colours of acrylic and watercolour paints, layering them on until I was happy with the effect then adding some gesso to help to tie the piece in with the background. 

See the wonderful texture from the acrylic paint? Some metal pieces provided nice finishing touches to the balloon.

 Blue Fern Studios Products Used:

 - Blue Fern Garden: Signature, Timeless, Parlour

- Ombre Dreams: Susan's Dream

- Blue Fern Chipboard: Grand Balloon

I so enjoyed making the gift bag that I decided to make a card along the same lines, this time using one of the Eastern Lanterns, and one of my favourite colours, orange.

On the Grand Balloon chippy I achieved the texture by dabbing with my finger in the wet paint; with this one I held my heat gun close to the acrylic paint to cause it to bubble and create this gorgeous effect. I then added some modelling paste and gesso to enhance the aged effect.

I treated one of the Leafy Page Accents in a similar manner, though I used a copper mist instead of the orange acrylic as my base colour (I applied clear gesso to the piece first, so that the mist would sit on top instead of seeping into the porous chipboard).

Blue Fern Studios Products Used:

- Blue Fern Garden: Parlour

- Ombre Dreams: Susan's Dream, Shannon's Dream

- Blue Fern Chipboard: Eastern Lanterns and Leafy Page Accents

Thank you for stopping in today!

May Creations with Jelissa

Hello Blue Fern fans!

I'm so glad to be back here to share two layouts with you, created with gorgeous BFS papers and chipboards.

"Blessings"

I wanted a light white-washed look for this layout and treated my Blue Fern Studios chipboards accordingly.

I used the "Blessings" word from "Spiritually Speaking" word set as my title and kept it very simple with a coat of gesso, some dabbing with grey chalk ink and distressed the edges with some black ink.

And layered in between my patterned papers are pieces from "Mini Ring Things". I covered with a coat of gesso and painted with watercolours to match my background. This was followed by colored texture pastes to give more dimension.

Blue Fern products used:

Spiritually Speaking word set

Mini Ring Things

"Moments"

My second layout uses the gorgeous Blue Fern Garden collection papers. I have very few 12x12 sheets left for my background, but am really fortunate to have one last sheet of "Parlour" left! I love the light blue and green with just a tinge of brown in the wood grain design, which matches my photo perfectly.

I have several scrap pieces of Blue Fern Garden left as well and those are just ideal for layering.

I used the Wildflower Flourish Bundle chipboard here. 

A word cut out from "Calling Cards" which I used as my title. 

Tucking in Checker Bits and the Graduated circles chipboard pieces into the main cluster.

Just in case you're wondering how I put this page together, below is a start-to-finish video tutorial I put together. Hope you enjoy watching it and find the techniques for altering the chippies useful!

Blue Fern products used:

Blue Fern Garden "Parlour"

Blue Fern Garden "Calling Card"

Checker Bits

Graduated Circles
Wildflower Flourish Bundle

Thank you again for dropping by. Do check back on our blog regularly for more wonderful inspiration from the rest of the design team.

love,
Jelissa

The Colors of Blues and Browns by Joyce

Greetings everyone, this month I found inspiration in the colors of the blues and browns found in the Blue Fern Garden papers.

The Love Letters Paper was used on this layout:

Most of the flowers in the layout were made with a die cut and the Parlour paper,  the bike surrounded by the flowers near the photo is the Penny Farthing cycle chipboard.

 

Here's a little mixed media tag using the Signature paper as the base, with lost of stamping and gesso on top of the reverse side of the paper which was then torn into strips. The little fussy cutting ribbon came from the Calling Cards paper. The Apothecary jar was treated with some white paint, fiber paper, and blue mist applied with a fine paint brush, then it was placed on top of one of the many Ever After Frames.

And, finally here's a greeting card using one of the Calling Cards, applied on top of the back side of the Parlour paper.  The little humming bird was treated with white paint, script stamp, and some blue mist.

 

Thank you for stopping by and allowing me to share my design team creations with you.  I'll be seeing you again on June 17th with some creations from the new Blue Fern Studios Ombre Dreams paper collection. 

Save Those Punch-Outs Tutorial

Hello, Blue Fern fans! Jackie here today with a little tutorial about using those little bits of chipboard you might normally recycle.

I don't know about you, but as soon as I get an order of chipboard, I tend to punch out the little extra bits of chipboard. The pieces that I don't think will find use as design features on a one of my projects I put into a Ziploc bag to be used to add height in my layering later on. Those that I feel I will use go into another bag. But recently I've started looking at those castoff pieces in a different light, as parts of a whole.

Take the Garden Window set.

You might normally punch out the flourishes and set them aside (I did), but they make wonderful additional details to your piece.

If you are planning on reassembling your chipboard pieces, you want to be sure to use media that will just coat the top of the piece and not cause the sides to change dimension. For this reason I chose to use embossing enamel rather than paint.

I prefer my embossing ink in a dabber so that I have better control of where it goes (using either the dabber top or by removing the top and painting the ink on).

Cover your main piece with one colour of embossing enamel and heat emboss.

The white is pretty stark, so once it had cooled I went in with several colours of chalk ink to add some depth, making sure to heat set each colour before I added the next.

 I then heat embossed the insert pieces in a different colour of embossing enamel.

Here's what the finished piece looks like:

And my layout:

Some closeups:

From the Heart Set, misted.

A piece from the Shabby Brick Panel, treated in the same way as the Garden Window.

I love the shutters that go with the Garden Window - they seem very Old World to me. I've added the sprigs from the All Natural Set, treated with the same colour embossing enamel as the punch outs for some continuity and to give the impression of a window box. The "Click" is from the Picture Perfect Set.

The masking on the Parlour paper from Blue Fern Garden was done using Ceramic Stucco, which gives amazing texture and accepts other media beautifully - I coloured mine with mists and chalk ink.

I love the way chipboard pieces add so much interest to your flower clusters.

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope that you'll start looking at those little throwaway bits of chipboard in a new light!

1960 by Lisa Griffith

Hello there! 

It's my turn to share my projects that I made this month. For both my layout and my card
I used the same techniques on my chipboard pieces , and I really love how they turned out.

The first project is a layout featuring a photograph of my Grandma....

'1960'

Here I have used a gorgeous Blue Fern Studios chipboard called 'Blooming Flourish.' I will try to show a close up below so you can see how a few simple techniques can alter your chipboard to make them look so beautiful. First I covered the chipboard with Viva Croco Crackling paint in white and set it with a heat gun to get an amazing weathered and cracked look. Then I covered the chipboard with a deep purple ink and let that dry. Last step is I applied embossing gel around the edges of the chipboard and then embossed them using silver embossing powder.  Really love the final result, it made the pieces look really aged and added so much character to my projects. 

I hope you'll try it!

Here are a few close ups...

I also made a card using an absolutely stunning Blue Fern Studios piece called 

'Damask Motif' that I treated the same way as I mentioned above, 

and really let this piece be the star. 

I started with the Blue Fern Studios paper called 'Parlour' as my base and then applied 

gesso, purple mist and some stamping underneath the altered chipboard.

Here is a close up..

I hope I have inspired you a little to alter your chipboard, 

and have fun playing with some textures! 

Until next time,

Lisa 

Pink & Blue with Leila Cardoso

Hello Ladies

Leila's here today to show you 2 projects using the gorgeous Blue Fern Studios products, chippies and papers.

The first one is a blue layout 12x12, Boys will be Boys...

The circles I applied a layer of gesso and then with a brush applied  blue ink irregularly.

In the title I made the same thing with the circles, then applied some colorless relief.

BFS products:

Blue Fern Garden collection - Parlour paper

Graduated Circles

Boys will be boys

My second project for this month is a pink paper craft bag for gifts, I customize it with stencil, modeling past and spray ink, put some piece of paper and other little cute things...

Here I used the chippie with no change...

And this I colored with acrilic paint and put some spray ink and little drops...

BFS products:

Blue Fern Garden collection - Boudoir paper

Blue Fern Garden collection - Calling cards

Symphony border

Natural Sprigs set

So, this it is! Thanks for stopping by.

xoxo

Leila

"(love these) Memories" by Lisa Griffith

Hello everyone! I hope this post find you all well. It's my turn to share my projects today. The first layout I created was an experiment just to get some interesting looks using the new line of paper from Blue Fern Studios.

"(love these) Memories"

Here I started with the Blue Fern Studios paper called "Signature", and created some texture using heavy gesso and a stencil, and then sprayed with Ranger Vintage Photo ink and water. These papers really are amazing how well they hold up to whatever mediums you want to use. (There was a little bit of warping, but a small price to pay.) I love how the paper, inks and gesso mixed to create a watercolor effect. The chip board pieces I used is one of Captured Words piece that I cut in half and pieces of the Chainlink Panel. For the chipboards I coated them with gesso and then painted them with brown ink and then a coat of clear crackle paint. I was trying to get them to look like wood to match my photo. I also used a small strip cut off from the bottom of the paper, and a piece of the blue packaging that comes with the chipboard that I punched with a lacy punch and layered under my photo. I also cut out some butterflies Blue Fern Studios paper "In Bloom".

Next up I have a layout that I created using a vintage photo of my mum.......

"Pauline"

Here I used three different pieces of chip board called Circle Motifs, Petite Windows and Iron Work Accents. For all of the pieces I painted with Silks paint in Emperor's Gold (my new all-time favorite) and then stamped over the pieces with black ink. I added some bits of a vintage magazine, some Prima flowers and pink paint.

And my last project is a mixed media card I made for St. Patrick's Day.

I created my card using a piece of the paper "Signature" as my base, lots of stamping, misting, and the gorgeous Blue Fern Studios chip board called Blooming Foliage. I covered the chipboard with a light coat of gesso, and then painted it with green mist and gold paint and then a coat of Glossy Accents.

I hope you have enjoyed my projects and feel a little inspired?

Thanks for looking,

Hugs, Lisa xo