STUDIO KATIA

DESIGN BLOG

Foxes with Anni!

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, Guest Designer, Hello Cards, Thank You Cards

Hey stampers, Anni here!

So happy and honored to be a guest designer for Studio Katia this month.
I had so much fun playing with these super cute stamps. For my cards today I used the set called Foxes. I am a big fan of foxes and it is very hard, well, let’s say impossible, to resist fox stamps. And this set is especially awesome.
I started by stamping all images in this set on white cardstock with alcohol marker friendly ink. I didn’t use all the images in the end but I like to colour all the images to have a few to choose from. For the colouring I decided to go with Copics because I love the bright colours.

I have something shocking to tell you: I am a fan of fussy cutting. With the coordinating dies it seems I could never get them in the right place and never end up with an even border around the images. I don’t know why but I found the ones from Studio Katia much easier to use and you may notice that I got a satisfying result.

For my first card I used a die from the set Dotted Pattern Set 1 and for the sentiment the hello die from the You’re Ranunculus Coordinating die set. For a little bit of interest I stamped and heat embossed some mushrooms on my cardbase.

I assembled the card and added some sequins for the finishing touch.

My second card is a real clean and simple one.

I just added a Mini Thank You die cut to my sleeping fox. I think such a cute image can stand on its own.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great week.

Anni

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Mini Floral Tags with Laurie

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, Floral Cards, Thank You Cards

Hello everyone and welcome back!!  Laurie here to start your week off with a bit of a different project.  I decided to make some shaped tags (could be used as cards too, I suppose)!  This idea came to me as I was drifting off to sleep on Saturday night…does that happen to anyone else?  Just random craft thoughts pop into your head at any given time??
I used the large flower image from the Thank You So Much stamp set. Instead of stamping the image the right way and then colouring it, I used the back side of the side first (so instead of inking the lined image side, I inked the flat, back side of the stamp).
This is Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink spritzed about 4 times with water.  After pressing the stamp onto watercolour paper, this is the result:

When you lift the Misti door, the water and ink will pool in one spot, giving you a different look every time!  I stamped 3 more flowers using Worn Lipstick, Peacock Feathers and Spiced Marmalade.  After the images were dry, I flipped the stamp right way up.  Because the first layer is the mirror image of the actual stamp, it took some time to figure out good placement.  But because the flat side of the stamp is actually larger, the lined image fit well!
I inked of the stamp with Versamark Ink and used different embossing powders on each one.

Next, I die cut each of the flowers along with 4 pieces of ivory cardstock with the co-ordinating die.  On the ivory piece, I scored about 1/2 inch from the top and applied some Scor-Tape.  This will create the back of the tag.

This is everything adhered together:

I used a regular hole punch to make holes in the top of the flowers for some ribbon to go.  For the sentiments, I used some of the fabulous word dies that are available in the shop!  I die cut the “thank you” from the Thank You So Much Dies, and both the “hello” and ” lovely” come from the new You’re So Ranunculus dies.  All of these were cut out with the same ivory cardstock.
I used Multi Matte Medium to adhere the die cuts onto each tag, looped some ribbon through the holes and the tags were almost done!!  
For embellishments, I used some large and small clear round dots from the Mixed Pack.  And across each sentiment, I brushed some Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle.
Once I stamped one, I had to keep going and make a few different ones!

These were really easy to make and I love the variation of colour you get using the wet stamp!!
Thank you so much for joining me today!  I hope you all have a fabulous week!!
See you soon!

Theme Week | North American July: Day 1 – with Laurie

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, CAS, Thank You Cards, Theme Week

Hello everyone and happy Monday!! Laurie here to share a card using the theme of a North American July (Red and White OR Red, White and Navy) coloured project.  Of course these are very patriotic colours and pretty soon it will be Canada Day(July 1st) and Independence Day(July 4th)!  Although, my card doesn’t really celebrate either one of those occasions, it is definitely a very Canadian card 🙂
I started by stamping the Mandala Flower stamp, twice, in Versamark Ink onto some red cardstock.  I then heat embossed the images with white embossing powder.  Right off the bat, I loved the look!!  However, I wanted to add a bit of detail to each flower, so I used a white pencil crayon to do some simple shading in a few areas of the image.
This simple technique added SO much!!  I cut the red panel down using the rectangle die from the new Dotted Patterns Set 1 Creative Dies.  For the sentiment, I die cut the “thank you” from the Mini Thank You Bundle, three times from white cardstock, adhered them all together and glued them down onto the panel.
I did add some clear sparkle pen to the sentiment, although it was hard to capture in the photos.  To keep it simple, I added 5 drops of  White Nuvo Crystal Drops.  I love the way this turned out!!  And SO simple to create!!
Before I go, I do want to share a Red/ White and Navy card I made as well!! I wish I thought of this last week for our Masculine Theme Week..

I used the new Happy Stamp Set for the sentiment, the Dotted Patterns Set 1 and the Darling Ribbon and Dotted Frames Creative Dies for the panels and the Stitched Notebook Set Creative Dies for all the other die cut elements!

Thank you for joining us today as we start another fun Theme Week!!
See you soon….
Laurie

Guest Designer Emily Leiphart

/ CATEGORIES - Birthday Cards, Cards, CAS, New Release, Thank You Cards

Hi, it’s Emily here and I’m absolutely delighted to be guest designing with Studio Katia today! It’s a pleasure to discover new companies and amazing talents, especially Canadian ones. 😉 Studio Katia’s latest release is an incredible one and I loved playing with the new stamps, dies and embellishments! My first card is a birthday card featuring Kobi the Birthday Bear stamps and coordinating dies. He’s so adorable and I’m in love with those numbered candles!

 

I used a total of eight images from that set, along with their coordinating dies. I used fun foam to pop up the candles and balloon since it was the easiest way to layer small areas. I stamped all of the images with black pigment ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder, then used distress inks to colour everything. I used the Clear Round Drops Mix on the balloons.

My second card features the You’re So Ranunculus stamp set, Mini Thank You dies and Dotted Patterns Set 1 dies. I stamped the flowers with watermark ink and heat embossed with gold tinsel embossing powder. Then I watercoloured the image with distress inks.

After the panel dried, I dry embossed the largest frame using Dotted Patterns Set 1. You can see the details in the close-up photo below.

To create the sentiment, I watercoloured a die cut from Mini Thank You and layered it, first, with black cardstock and fun foam.

Aside from the tans and browns I used for the bear and cake, I used the same bright colours on both cards. The ranunculus card is busier and more saturated with colour and shine, while the birthday card is clear and simple in comparison. I love using the same colours on two very different cards to show versatility.

I hope you enjoyed today’s projects. Please visit my blog for a full supply list. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Distress Oxide Thank You cards with Erica

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, CAS, New Release, Thank You Cards

Hello, it’s the birthday girl Erica on the blog today! Happy birthday to me, I’m 25 today, whoop whoop!! Admittedly, it’s something like the 13th time I’m 25 but honestly, who’s counting? I’m not one of these ‘let’s grow old gracefully’ kind of gals, nope, not me. Kicking and screaming is more my style. And when that fails, denial. Oh, and then drown my sorrows in cake! I have never denied being a bit of a drama queen when it comes to ageing.

The birthday cards and presents have been trickling in for a little while so I thought I’d best make some thank you cards to send out to people for making me feel special. One of my early birthday presents from my sweet husband was the full set of Distress Oxide inks and I decided to try some of these out for today’s cards.

The Distress Oxides are super smooth and so easy to ink blend (which I will most likely be doing on a card in the near future) but I thought I’d try some easy ink smooching on both white and black card stock to see how it came out. I did watch some tutorials by Tim Holt himself before I started because to be honest, I kinda had the ‘need the full set syndrome’ before even having tried a single one and told The Man who prompted me to get them. Which I did right away as the dutiful and obedient wife that I am….*I nearly managed to write that without falling off my chair laughing, lol*

Anyway… *still snickering to myself*… I picked out Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade and Fired Brick as my colour combination. These I rubbed directly onto my craft mat and then spritzed some water on it to ‘activate’ the oxide process. Then it was a simple-ish procedure of putting a piece of card stock down on top, smooch-smooch-smooch and flip over. I used my heat tool to help the drying process along and watched the magic. My first piece was white card stock and it looked amazing!

Moving on to the black card stock, I did the same thing in the same ink puddle. This didn’t work out as great. In hindsight, I should have started from scratch with this one too but, not one to give up, I dried it with the heat tool. Once it was dry, it had a really unique and fun pattern on it so I decided to use it anyway. Next time I will use less water and more ink on dark card stock though.

As these were going to be thank you cards, I grabbed the ‘Mini Thank You’ stamp set which has been a freebie with qualifying orders but will be released on its own in June. On the black card I decided to heat emboss it in white to make it stand out, I thought just stamping it with white ink might make it disappear. Before I stamped it with VersaMark ink, I sprinkled the card base with my anti-static tool to avoid those pesky stray bits of embossing powder sticking where I didn’t want them. On the bright coloured card I decided to go with black ink and not heat emboss it. When I look at it now, I think I should have said yes to heat embossing on this one too but you know, you live and learn.

Even with the fun backgrounds I thought the cards looked a bit plain. What’s that? Me? A sequin addict?? Where is that coming from?! *erm, totally guilty* So, yeah, it should come as about ZERO surprise that I grabbed some sequins to add some pizazz to these cards. One of my favourite fusions is the Crystal Rainbow mix and I got out some yellow, orange and hot pink ones in different sizes. These I added in a ‘meteorite shower’ kind of pattern across the card, yellow sequins on the yellow ink, orange sequins on the orange ink and hot pink ones over the red ink.

 

These cards are actually quite quick to make, especially once you get the hang of the Distress Oxides and how much water to add etc. They are even quicker when you don’t stop and faff as much as I sometimes do whilst making a card!

If you take the plunge and get these inks, take some time to get to grips with them and play around. You never know what might come out of it, and having ready made backgrounds are always a time-saver for those times you need to make a card in record time.

Well, that’s it for me for today, I’m off to celebrate the rest of my birthday with The Man and The Cheeky Chicas. And most likely a big piece of cake or four, since birthday calories don’t count.

Happy crafting from Erica

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COPIC Coloring Over Distress Smooshing Background

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, Floral Cards, Thank You Cards

Hi friends,

Svitlana is here today sharing a card made using Together We Bloom stamp set. This set has several very beautiful floral images and you know me – floral stamps are my favorite to work with.

SUPPLIES:

Together We Bloom Stamp Set

Thank You So Much Stamp Set

Clear Round Drops – Mix

 

To start my card off I created an distress ink smooshing background using Worn Lipstick, Mustard Seed and Moved Lawn onto a Tim Holtz watercolor panel. I pressed each ink pad onto a sandwich bag, sprayed them with water and placed the panel on them. Then I turned the paper with the bag over and with my fingers smudged inks as I wanted it all over the panel.

Then I stamped floral cluster using COPIC friendly Memento Tuxedo Black dye ink. I used masking paper to create masks for my flower to stamp them not overlapped. I tried to stamp flower over yellow and pink inks smooshing, and leaves over green. On the other hand I didn’t try to be very precise, which was almost impossible even if I’d try. I got parts of flowers stamped over green ink, and leaves over pink and yellow. As you can see in the end result – it didn’t really matter.

The flowers and leaved then were colored using COPIC markers. The flowers stamped over yellow ink I colored with yellow markers, used red markers to color over pink ink and leaves were colored with green.

After I finished my coloring I trimmed the panel to 3.75 x 5″. For the sentiment I choose very beautiful Thank You from Thank You So Much Stamp Set which I also stamped using Memento Tuxedo Black dye ink. This was an epic fail decision as my sentiment blended in with stamped florals. This happens with me all the time – after so much work put into a card I can ruin it with the last action. Of course I didn’t want to discard this card and all that work I invested in it. So I added shadow to the sentiment using white gel pen and this seemed to improve the situation. With the same pen I also added several dots around the florals. Along with color droplets, which I made with the same inks and small brush (just diluted some ink with water, picked up with brush and sprinkled all over the panel).

Also I covered the floral images with Clear Wink Of Stella. Of course it’s not visible on photos, but it is in real life.

I added several clear droplets of different sizes. Sometimes people as me what adhesive I use for these transparent droplets. I always use Ranger Multi Medium Adhesive in Matte finish. It dries clear and is not visible through clear droplets. Plus – this is very strong adhesive. I always use it for small non paper embellies like sequins, dots etc.

Lastly I foam mounted the panel onto a white card base I made out of Neenah Solar White cardstock. To  mount my panel I used a piece of white fun foam, cut a bit smaller then the panel, which I adhered with very strong Tombow Xtreme adhesive (it works great for stubborn surfaces, like foam or watercolor paper).

Have a wonderful day!

Svitlana

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Thank You So Much with Liliuska

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, Other, Thank You Cards

Hello, Everyone!

Liliuska here and I would like to share with you two thank you cards. I love creating black cards using heat embossing and coloured pencils. They have nice elegant look. And today I made two cards for your inspiration.

And even though you do need some time for stamping, heat embossing and quick colouring, I would say that these are pretty quick cards to make if you need to make something for next day.

For the first card I used white pencil and added some details and shadows on the flowers and around the sentiment. I love adding little touches and here I decided to use some drops and white sequins. It makes cards look more interesting.

SUPPLIES:

Together We Bloom | Clear Stamp Set

Darling Ribbon & Dotted Frames | Creative Dies

Frosted White Fusion

For the second card I decided to use red pencil and lightly colour flower petals with it. I also added a bit of white shadow around the sentiment to imitate writing on a blackboard.

SUPPLIES:

Thank You So Much | Clear Stamp Set

Darling Ribbon & Dotted Frames | Creative Dies

Rose Gold Fusion

Hope you will get inspired to create cards with beautiful StudioKatia products. Share your work with us!

Have a wonderful day!

Liliuska

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Mandala Marathon with Erica

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, Hello Cards, Other, Thank You Cards

Hello, Erica here!

I have another big project to share with you today. These were actually not planned at all but rather an after-thought. Or more a necessity to use the eight mandalas I had coloured. Yep, you read that right; eight. Sometimes I like sitting down just to colour and the Mandala stamp is so fun to try different colour combinations on.

SUPPLIES:

Medium Mandala Clear Stamp Set

Hello Alice Clear Stamp Set

Duo Talk Clear Stamp Set

Gansai Tambi 36 Set Watercolours

 

All of them are heat embossed in white on Strathmore Bristol Vellum water coloured paper as I wanted to use my Zig markers. It actually started with just the one but I didn’t like how that one turned out, I went with the wrong colours and it annoyed me so much that I had to try redeeming myself. So what started as a quick redemption colouring ended up a colouring marathon. I stamped up another one and another one and another one.. I was on such a roll that I ended up with eight coloured mandalas. At least they are all somewhat different from each other. After that first fateful one, I decided to stick to the same colour for each one, just varying the shades of it and that worked out much better. I think that might have been the turning point as well as the starting point of the colouring marathon.

Well, at some point I managed to rein myself in and stop with the stamping and colouring. I fussycut them all out and decided to do small square note cards with the mandalas. Using white backgrounds didn’t really work, I thought they were too boring. Ink blending was too big a job after my marathon. It really is too bad that colouring isn’t counted as cardio! I’d be fit as a fiddle!

Back to the backgrounds: I cut out stitched squares in water colouring paper and got the Gansai Tambi 36 pack out as well as a short bristled paint brush. Matching the droplet colours to the mandalas I got splattering like a mad woman. I love doing this, every single piece looks different and unique. The one for the pink mandala got sweeping pink brush strokes too as the pink looked way too red. Whilst letting the panels dry, I decided on sentiments for the cards. I thought it would be overkill to use the same one for all eight so I divided them up relatively evenly colourwise.

At this point I thought these might make a nice present for someone and having generic but useful sentiments would be the best way to go. I chose ‘Thanks’ from Duo Talk for half of them.

 

For the other half I went with ‘Just a Note’ from Hello Alice. These I stamped in black ink in the bottom right corner.

On my white card bases I adhered the backgrounds with foam tape and then the mandalas were added using slightly thinner foam tape. I love foam tape, it just adds a little something to a card without the addition of embellishments and the likes. Not that I didn’t toy with the idea of other embellishments but you will be surprised to hear I decided against it. Miracles happen, right?

Well, that’s it from me today. Happy crafting and see you soon again!

Erica

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Watercolour Cards with Liliuska

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, Hello Cards, Thank You Cards

Hello everyone!

Liliuska here and I’d like to share with you few watercolour cards. For these cards I used my favourite technique – masking a stripe with washi tape for the sentiment and stamp around it. With this you can go as simple and quick as you’d like, or spend more time on your images and enjoy some watercolouring time.

SUPPLIES:

Mandala Flower | Clear Stamp Set

Thank You So Much | Clear Stamp Set

Together We Bloom | Clear Stamp Set

Hello Alice | Clear Stamp Set

Darling Ribbon & Dotted Frames | Creative Dies

Sparkling Crystals – Mix

Majestic – Sequins Fusion

Space Silver – Sequin Fusion

I spent more time on this card, since I did some masking and heat embossing to arrange my flowers and add leaves. For the background I did a quick water wash of the watercolour panel and added colour around edges of stamped images. Next I grabbed a wet brush and “painted” with water from borders to flowers pushing the pigment towards heat embossed edges.

This card was the quickest to make. I simply masked a strip with washi tape, stamped and embossed Mandala image and quickly coloured with ecoline markers. I made simple watercolour background and added few splashes along with sparkling sequins.

My last card is similar to the previous. I masked the flower to add some leaves. I decided to make a warm grey background which worked perfectly with grey sequins.

 

I had a lot of fun making these cards! I like matching watercolours with different embossing powders and embellishments. Hope you enjoyed what I prepared for you today.

See you next time!

Liliuska

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Multi Color Embossed Mandala

/ CATEGORIES - Cards, Thank You Cards

Hi there.

Svitlana is here today sharing another card using Mandala Flower Clear Stamp Set.

I’m not a big mandala person, as I already mentioned before and don’t know much about them. When I think “mandala” I usually have two types of images in my head. Black and white one, made for therapeutic coloring. And a colorful one (apparently already colored lol).

So I decided to went with colored one.

SUPPLIES:

Mandala Flower Clear Stamp Set

Thank You So Much Stamp Set

This card was pretty fast, easy and fun to make. All you need are embossing powders of different colors.

So I simply was stamping the mandala onto a black panel using Versamark ink and pouring embossing powder of one color onto a part of it. Then I was stamping again (I was using my mini MISTI to stamp each time to the same spot) and adding another color.

First I thought that I wouldn’t need to stamp several times, as Versamark ink stays wet for pretty long time. But I didn’t take into consideration that I will be heat setting each color and this would dry Versamark stamping as well. It still was sticky, but a bit less. And I wasn’t getting good coverage when poured powder over.

Of you don’t have MISTI or other stamp positioning tool you still can achieve this look. You just need to add all colors of embossing powder at one time. Maybe using a small spoon, in order to not pour too much powder. As all excess in this case will mix together and most likely you’ll need to discard it.

After I finished embossing the mandala flower I red embossed a sentiment from Thank You So Much Stamp Set.

Then I thought my card was missing something and added dots here and there using fine point of Versamarker and also added powders of different colors to them.

Finally I adhered my panel onto a white card base made out of Solar White cardstock (I use 110 one, it’s nice and thick, live using it for card bases).

I really like this stamp and have a couple more ideas for using it, which hopefully I’ll show later this month 🙂

Have a great day!

Svitlana

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