Guest Designer Extravaganza Week 4

HOW-TO: A watercolor scene with stamps… It’s the final week of our Guest Designer Extravaganza and we have even more inspiration in store for you. Join us for beautiful winter scenes and artistic stamping.

Today we are soooo very excited to announce our next Guest Designer, Micheline “Mimi” Jourdain! Micheline brings stamps to life with beautiful watercolor scenes. And as a special bonus this week, Micheline will help inspire you to get even more from your holiday-themed stamps…they aren’t just for Christmas!

Hello everyone. I am Micheline Jourdain, AKA Mimi A La Carte, from L’Épiphanie, Québec.  I am so thrilled and honored to be a guest designer for a week for Penny Black. I live with my husband and ‘Ti-Minou’ the cat.  My daughter and 2 grand-daughters live next door. I used to have a boutique in Montréal and Penny Black was taking a great deal of space in the boutique.  All my clientele was addicted to those beautiful stamps.  Each time I would get a shipment from PB, the girls would applaud the UPS delivery man and then it was like Christmas all over again. I currently am using Flickr, Facebook, and Pinterest to show my creativity. Hoping that my cards will motivate everyone to use PB stamps, they are so gorgeous!

And to give you a peek at her techniques in achieving this stunning look, Micheline created this tutorial just for you.

MATERIALS NEEDED: Watercolor paper, 100% cotton (Fabriano) 140lbs, hot pressed; Penny Black Stamps 4202L Berry Red, Snow White, 30-251 Nature’s Gift (bird); watercolor paint brushes; Distress Ink pads from Tim Holtz (Chipped Sapphire, Rusty Hinge, Broken China and Black Soot); Winsor & Newton masking fluid

Apply masking fluid as to make snowflakes and let dry.  Draw a circle for the sun.  Wet the paper where you make your sky and apply Chipped Sapphire and Broken China.

Let dry thoroughly as shown above.

Wet the sun and reflection area, then color with Rusty Hinge and paint the reflections.  Use Chipped Sapphire to paint the snow bank.

Ink the Berry Red, Snow White stamp with Black Soot, spray water on the stamp and stamp the card.

Go over the fence with a paint brush and black soot ink.  I then stretched the left part of the fence and stamped the small bird from Nature’s Gifts set.  I then made the last 2 snow banks by the tree and diluted the Black Soot to make the fence shadows.  LET DRY THOUROUGHLY before removing the frisket.

Et voilà!  Enjoy!

Shop for today’s featured Penny Black supplies:

• 4202L Berry Red, Snow White
• 30-251 Nature’s Gifts
• 30-261 Nature’s Friends
• 30-260 On the Town
• 40-246 Skyline
• And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter!