Water Colour Effects with the Calligraphy Pens

I know that many of you may think that you can't paint with water colours, but I'd like to show you a way to use the Zig Blendable Calligraphy Pens which achieves the watercolour effect with ease. You will then be able to produce little watercolour effect pictures like the one on the card.




The first thing that you need to do is draw two lines. Not straight, but something like the ones in the picture. Don't get too hung up on this as they are only simple lines. Don't press too hard.




Now choose the colour of blendable pens that you want to have as flowers. I chose Powder Blue and Splash and touch the darker one to the edge of the lighter one. See the earlier blog to see a picture of how to do this.

Use the pen to add petals either side of each stem. Think of the flower as a long triangle. You will need wider petals at the bottom and narrower, tighter and smaller at the top.


Below is another example of a flower that is thinner than the one in the card example and has three stems. You can experiment. Feel free to get going.


Now you can cut out your picture and decorate it as you wish. I edged the piece of card and added a bow.

A Fairy Stamp at Last

I suppose that it's because my company is called, Craft Fairy, that we are frequently asked for fairy stamps and I am afraid that I usually have to tell people that we don't have any faries.

Things have changed!!

The fairies have arrived in the shape of the Enchanted Ink stamps from the Netherlands.

Here is the first card to be made using just one of the stamps.

I stamped the fairy and cut her out. I then used her to edge one of our frames and here she is.

Customised Flowers and Calligraphy Background.

I had anothe rof my bright ideas last night and I thought of putting the calligraphy petal background to work with the customised flowers and this is what I came up with.



There's no need to tell you what to do as it's explained in the previous posts.

One Sassy Lady

Kim at Simply Faries has spurred me on to use one of my most popular stamps. I liked what she did so much that I had to have a go as well. This is my effort.

Click here for the stamp sheet.

As usual I used the Brushables and the Art and Graphic pens from Kuretake to colour the image.

Another flower card with the calligraphy pens

Well, I had some of the background paper left so I decided that I could not waste it and I made another card. I was a bit more practised by this time and, I have to admit, that I prefer this card. you can ring the changes with the sentiment at the bottom.

See what you think.

Calligraphy pens for anything but...

When I was at a recent show many people loved the calligraphy pens but they didn't think that they would be clever enough to use them for writing. So here's another use for calligraphy pens that needn't frighten you.

First of all you'll need at least two calligraphy pens in toning colours. I've used a light and a dark one from the Heart pouch set.

What I then did was touch the side of the lightest pen with the dark pen.

This will allow you to write in two colours. Below is an example of simple writing using the two tones.

However, I did say that this set of instructions was for anything but calligraphy so this is what I did next.

I kept the darker edge of the pen still and moved the light side in a rough quarter turn and got a petal. I then moved the paper a bit and repeated the above. I did this until I got about 5 petals. Just remember to move the paper round every time you want a new petal.

Now that you have a flower head you can add a stem and a couple of leaves. Mine are not the best here I must admit. I did them better on the card example.

I then did a few flower heads and joined them with a few strokes of a green pen. I layered this up and tied it with ribbon and there was a topper.

Now I could have left it as a simple topper but I wanted a bit more so I decided to use the pen to make background paper. All I did for this was made simple petals as I explained above and kept on moving the pen and the paper. Do some upside down and some to the left some to the right to make them look like random petals.

I added a tiny green stem and used the sheet to make a background paper for the following card.

As you can see I didn't even use the pen to write the message. I did put a line of petals at the top of the card though.

More to follow.

Christmas Tree Tri-Fold Card

Here we are with the first of the Christmas cards. I've taken my time with this one and the step by step instructions are below the card.

First of all take a piece of white hammer card, 140mm x 280mm. Score and fold to make a card 140mm x 140mm. You need the hammer finish to be on the inside of the card which is the opposite of the usual way.

With a fine pencil mark the 7cm point at the top and bottom of the card and draw a line between them as seen in the photo.

Now place your die cut, the tree in this case, on the line as shown. It looks better if it is closer to the top than the middle. Draw around the left hand side of the tree as you are looking at it on the page.Remove the die cut and using a craft knife cut along the pencil line. Now score the lines above and below the tree and fold back. Your hammer finish will now be on the right side of the card.

Your tree shape will now pop out.


Cover the pop out shape with the tree die cut and then proceed to decorate as you wish.

I used white glitter card, silver miri card and silver ribbon.

A fantastic card

I've just seen a great card made with the lady in the negligee from the Censored set of stamps. It was made by Kim and you can link to it here.

You'll just love it.

How to customise a die cut flower.

I have random thoughts now and then and I suddenly thought of how to use the die cut flower heads and the brushable pens that I have on the Craft Fairy site to bring a bit of excitement into my cards.

So this is what we do

Take the plain white die cut hibiscus flower heads. See below.




At the moment they are fairly boring but I am going to transform them.

Step one:

Colour the flower with the paler of your chosen brushables.

Step two:
The deeper tone is used to brush out from the centre.

Step three:
The deepest of your chosen colours is used to flick the colour out from the centre and it is kept shorter than the other two colours.

Step four:
Use a silver pen to add strokes to the centre and edges of the flower.

Step five:

Stick the centre to the flower. You can curl the petals if you wish.

Tulip Card

Just when you thought that I had finished with the tulips up pops another card. well, you can't keep a good stamp down.

This is made using the method that I explained in a previous posting and then cut out and mounted on the card. I used yet more papers from my Take out the Stash box and spring green ribbon. the sentiment is also one of my stamps and it's from the Stained Glass sheet.

Do you like it? Leave a comment, do!