Memento Ink blending recipes, with video

I made recipes for Distress inks about a year ago, or a bit longer. Today I thought I should do the same for Memento inks. As I blend with them quite often it would be handy to have a view of the recipes I came up with, rather than reinventing the same recipes over and over.
So I looked at my color chart and picked colors I thought would go well together. Some didn't work as well, but most of them are OK, if not super.
I had four colos of  ink left after I made all the strips I had thought of and, well, I had to include those four too, right?

To make the cards, I cut up a sheet of paper (in this case old logo paper from a company I was given), not my regular cardstock, and it doesn't blend as well, but well enough for this.
I mean these are just to give you/me an idea, I won't be using these on a card!

I cut 3cm strips, a little over 2 inch as our paper is 21cm, so it would give me 14 swatches out of one sheet.

Then I started the inkblending, most are with three, some have four colors, so some swatches have a white bit at the bottom, feel free to inkblend all of the strips if you want.
My hands are aching now, so I hope you can still read my rheumatic handwriting ;-)
If you prefer you could print the ink names and then attach the swatches, but I found it hard to position it.

My scanner has made high contrast scans, that's not how my inkblending looks!, but again, it's just for reference, I would urge you to  make your own, if you're interested.

Remember Memento reacts with water, much like the Distress inks. the smooth out wonderfully, better than Distress inks to be honest.
If you're new to stamping and need good stamping inks and blending ink and can't buy both, get these first ;-)

I haven't tried them as watercolors yet, not sure if they'd work for that, we'll see.

Everyday Christmas card series #21, with video

Today I'm using a digi stamp from Digistamp Boutique. It's an UK based company and I paid through Paypal.
I'm using one of the images from cute penguin set and one of the sentiments.
I sized it in Photoshop with three others to fill one sheet of Crafter's Companion Neenah paper and printed it with  my inkjet printer. One of my cartridges is a pigment ink, there's two black ones, not sure which is used when, but it seems to work with my Spectrum Noir markers.

I cut the image to size, then decided to make it into a Polaroid style and then I decided to chop off the sentiment and place it underneath the image instead....

Colored the penguins with Spectrum Noir lol.

markers, added lashes to the penguin on the right, so it's now a couple. I used blue and green on the scarf for the boy penguin, but you could use girlie colors on the scarf and add lashes to the left penguin too, so versatile

Mounted the panels with foamtape and used my triangle ruler to make sure it's all lined up straight.

Nuvo shimmer pen on their beaks, why not?

Merry & Bright

This week's theme over at Less is More is: one layer and stars.

For my card I made my own shimmer paste with Ranger transparent glossy embossing paste and Ranger Perfect Pearls and Shine powder from Kippers.

I cut a sheet of black card in half and folded it to make my card. Then I applied the paste through the Simon Says Stamp Falling stars stencil and let it dry. I used three shades of blue on this, but on my test run I used purples and pinks...But I made a panel out of it, so not one layer anymore....

Heat embossed the sentiment from Simon Says Stamp (3x4 Christmas) with Papermania superfine silver.

For more information or to play along with the Less is More Challenge, see this

AAA cards Challenge #101, with 2 videos

This fortnight the AAA cards Challenge is: inspired by a film.
Our sponsor this time is: Winnie & Walter and you could win a $25 gift certificate.

I was inspired by the film Under the Tuscan sky, it's from way back in 2003, but it's on TV a lot and I watch it every time, as I love the villa she buys and the story of course.

In this movie Francis gets divorced and whilst on holiday, she decides to by a Tuscan villa and stay in Italy.
She meets a guy and at one point in the movie she goes down to see him. She asks the policeman on a blue scooter for a lift. She is wearing a white dress as in his dream.
That was a bit hard on this stamp from

Newton's Nook (Newton scoots by), so I decided to color the cat as Francis' hair and give the cat a white scarf, kept the  blue scooter.
I did all the coloring on Crafter's Companion Neenah paper with Spectrum Noir markers.
I did the highlights with a white gelpen. I stamped the image with Simon Says Stamp intense black ink and had the Brother scan & cut do it's magic.

The landscape is a dieset from Marianne design (lr0482 Tuscan landscape) and the road is from Sugar pea design (either home or school scape).

I did a lot of diecutting and then inlaying them into each other.

As one of the requirements of our challenge blog is to keep the layers to a minimum, now it looks like three but it's only one ;-).
I shaded the middle one a little with Distress inks Shabby shutters and a finger dauber. I did pull three colors of green, but I didn't like the lightest really and with the shading there's a bit more vidual depth.

The sentiment is also from the Newton's Nook set and I stamped it with Versafine onyx black ink in my Stampers friend from Be Creative.

Mounted the landscape with foamtape, but tape runner would also have worked and also mounted Newton with foamtape.

I hope you can see the movie in my card ;-)

For more information on the AAA cards challenge, or to play along, see this

Thinking of you...

Is the theme of the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, showcasing Memory box.
It's almost a year ago my mother passed away and my first Christmas kinda sucked. I kept myself busy but I can relate to how it is a not so nice time for some people.

So I made kind of a Christmas card, but with a thinking of you sentiment from Stampendous (encouraging words).
For the circle I sued Memory Box  tree branch circle and cut it from a panel, slightly smaller than the cardbase.

Traced the opening on the cardbase, so I knew where to inkblend. I used Memento ink ( nautical blue, teal zeal and summer sky) and I spritzed it with water for a snowy effect

in the background. The sentiment is also stamped with Memento nautical blue as I felt black might be too stark. I did consider making the edges black around the  panel, but yeah I decided against it.

I diecut the retro deer from Simon Says Stamp out of brown card and stuck a red enamel dot on his nose as a little wink to the recipient. Maybe get a smile out of them.

I mounted the panel with foamtape and then tucked the deer under the trees, using tape runner.

For more information or to play along to the Simkon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, see this

Treat bag for Halloween and Christmas

 The Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is : not a card.

So I made a treatbag.
I made mine Christmassy, but then I also filmed it for my YouTube channel next week with Halloween stamps, ofcourse if you use other kinds of paper it could be for teachers, parties, birthdays, weddings etc.

I don't have the Lawn Fawn die and frankly with my scoreboard I can do more, different sizes and projects.
I made it to fit 2 out one sheet of 12x12 and you need a piece of paper that is 6"x12".
You can make it taller, but 6" is the width of my Big Shot if you want to diecut out the "handles", I used a small rectangle shaped die with rounded corners.

Score on the long side at: 2", 5", 7"and 10" then on the short side at 2"only.
Burnish your scorelines, then cut the bottom and notch them slightly.

I used a hole punch to make 4 holes and  then fed some silver ribbon through it, and tied it together.
You can also just stample the ribbon to the bag and or hot glue the ribbon also.
My hole punch is a little big and the smaller one was too tiny to feed ribbon trhough, maybe bakerstwine would have been better, but hey, you live and learn.

I use hot glue to put  my boxes and treatbags together, it's faster and more secure than tape or liquid glue, but you can

use anything you like ;-)

If you want to see how I made it, the video is going live on October 26th 0:00 Amsterdam time.

For more information or to play along with the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, see this

Everyday Christmas card series #20, Gerda Steiner design digis, with video

For today's card I used a digistamp from Gerda Steiner designs. Little Christmas reindeer. It's a pack of digital stamps. I also printed out the Christmas tree, which is a free digistamp.
On the other sheets there are digis from DigiStamp boutique, and I made little scenes with the tree borders, the GSD mummy cat and the little gnomes, those are all separate images.

But I'm using the little Christmas reindeer. Printed it with  my inkjet printer onto the Crafter's Companion Neenah paper and colored it with my Spectrum Noir markers.
Bit of shimmer on the ornaments and nose with the Nuvo shimmer pen (clear gloss) and a white gelpen to emphasis the shine even more.

I added the sentiment whilst is was in Photoshop. Matted the panel to centre it all up again and adhered it to the cardbase with taperunner.