One card two ways!

Lisa Spangler

5 years ago

Lisa is here to celebrate fall — and spring! — with one card, two ways! It’s a great way to get more from your supplies.

Hello there and happy fall y’all! (Or spring as the case may be!) It always boggles my brain how the seasons are opposite “down under”, as spring is in full swing here in Texas. In today’s post I’m going to share one card two ways, with both of ’em using the 6 colors in the Daniel Smith Essentials set — it’s perfect for mixing colors for every season! I’ve listed the colors individually in the supplies in case ya have some already and want to pick up the others.

I’m also going to be using the Mondo Oak Leaf stamp and dies along with Mr. Bear from All Inside — still one of my favorite sets of all time. Pro tip: the Mondo Oak Leaf is great for masculine cards.

I started off by stamping some bears and accessories, plus some sentiment strips from Tis the Season — this set cracks me! Pro tip: don’t be afraid to use fun colors on those acorns and bears, they don’t have to be just brown. Here I used a watery mix of quinacridone rose for the spring bear and a brown mixed from pyrrol scarlet + phthalo blue for the fall guy.

I added some glitter to the spring bear for that “sugar-coated” look! I didn’t think of it at the time, but rock candy distress glitter would well — ROCK!

Mixing Green

Let’s chat a bit about about mixing green. Mixing greens is one of the easiest things to do — just add yellow + blue as we learned back in school, right? But which yellow and blue always used to stump me, until I started playing with the Daniel Smith Essentials set.

The DS Essentials set of 6 tubes comes with warm and cool colors of each of the three primary colors, known as a “split primary” palette. I squeezed my colors out into this little palette and I keep it on my desk at all times.

Hansa yellow light (HYL for short!) is the “cool” yellow in the set, and when mixed with phthalo blue, the “cool” blue it makes a pure green that screams spring! You can tone it down a bit if you like by mixing in the complementary color — in this case, a little pink/red — I usually go for the quinacridone rose that’s also in the DS Essentials set.

French ultramarine is the “warm” blue in the set, meaning that it has a little red tone to it — so when you mix HYL with it you get a more muted green — the red is built right in to the pigment. French UMB is also granulating — love that!

Here’s a scan so you can see those swatches bigger:

Spring greens scan — click to see it full size!

Side note: here’s a super simple way that I learned to remember a color’s complement — it’s whichever of the three primaries is left out of the mix. So yellow + blue = green, and the one that was missing is red so it’s the complement. Now take orange. Orange = yellow + red, so the complement is blue. Hope that makes sense!

Now let’s get back to the cards!

Tips and Tricks:

Use clear embossing ink while stamping and vary the embossing powder. Here I used copper powder for the fall card and clear for the spring.
Use a BIG brush to color those leaves and splash on color! Don’t mess around with a tiny little thing 🙂
For the spring card I mixed Hansa yellow light + Phthalo blue for the bright spring green — letting some color mix on the paper. Then I mixed Hansa yellow light + French ultramarine for the darker green.
For the fall card I splashed on quinacridone rose, pyrrol scarlet, new gamboge and let them mingle on the paper. Then I premixed some French ultramarine and pyrrol scarlet to make a brown and splashed that on too!
While everything was still damp I splattered on some more colors — fun!
I also used the Essential Rectangles dies to cut a little frame out of the card — love the look this gives! It adds that perfect lil something. Also! If your paper gets warped from watercoloring, running it through your die cut machine with that rectangle will flatten it right out. BONUS!