LINDA TRACE DESIGNS

crafty adventures of a makeup loving Japanophile!

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Friday 28 January 2011

Letter Set...

Hi!!

I've been meaning to make something like a letter set/stationary set for quite some time now.  I saw that my lovely friend Joy had done a really masculine one on her blog a few weeks back and decided it was time to get the idea in my head onto paper and card.

So, here is a letter set I made for my gorgeous mother in law Di,

 It was SUPER simple to make, just cut some white cardstock to size (4"x5") then stamped the Hero Arts K5431 Tall Flower stamp on the edge (making sure to 'run off' the edge with the stem), then I coloured in with my Prismacolour pencils! love those pencils).
  

 Here you can see the shading I did.  I made each flower (or each card) slightly different, as the real flowers would be. With all of them, I started with the lightest colour and did the entire flower, then I added in darker shading in various places. On the tips for one flower, on the base for another, streaked throughout the entire petal (as you can see on the left hand card in the above photo) etc etc.
This was very similar to using Copic Markers. Start light, then add in shading. Lastly, go back over the whole thing with the lighter colour to blend.
 Here is the purple/lavender set. I love how the shading really really worked well. I added a little yellow to the tips of the petals on the far right card.
 I could have used some Gamsol (or similar) to really blend the colours in well, but a) I don't have any yet (haha) and b) I wanted these to look hand coloured. That's kind of the point right?!
The leaves I coloured in a very basic way. Bright light green all over, then added darker almost olive green on various sides of the leaves (or in the centre 'vein').

After finishing the colouring, I added the "Just a note" sentiment from a PTI stamp set. I then mounted the white cardstock onto some black cardstock 1/8" larger than the original piece. I then trimmed 4 of the Hero Arts Notecards in half (down the seam/fold) to make 'postcard' type cards. I then mounted the pieces onto the half-notecards.

**You could very easily just use the notecards as is and it would look perfect, I just wanted these to be more like postcards than notecards.
On the back of the notecard (what would usually be the white interior), I stamped the Tall Flower again in Versamark to get a watermark image (no photo for this :)).

Here is the matching letter set.
I used the lined paper pdf provided by the amazing Shari Carroll over at Hero Arts months ago (I've been meaning to do a letter set for a while now.) HERE is the link.
All you do is print onto whatever paper you're using (I used Hero Arts Layering paper) and then trim it in half (you get two 'sets' of lines to each page).
I stamped and coloured in exactly the same way as the notecards, I just didn't add the sentiment or gemstones.
On the back I did the watermark again (sorry for the photo, it's REALLY hard to get a good clear shot of a watermark in a house as dark as this one!)
see the watermark on the bottom left of the pink??? it's there...really...no, REALLY.
 Of course, I had to do matching envelopes too.
 But I didn't colour the envelopes in, didn't need it.

 This is the whole set completed.


Anyhow, I hope you like this! I really had fun making them.

I'll be back tomorrow hopefully with the follow up project I made (I was in colouring mode by this point haha!)

Hope you're all enjoying much cooler weather than I. It was well over 40 degrees today and I was holed up inside in the air-conditioning (which I'm sorry to say, did a poor job).

I'd love to hear what you think of the letter set!

Love,

L xx


3 comments:

Anita Rex said...

What a gorgeous letter set! I like how you colored in each flower! Your mother in law will love it!

Arlene said...

Gorgeous stationary and cards. Lots of time spent - so worth it!

jen said...

Have just found your blog, and I really love these letter and card sets. They make a lovely gift, great for those people that have everything already.