Mr Cardmaker is Guesting for Picket Fence Studios!

Well, the wonderful Lydia Fiedler asked me to be a guest designer for Picket Fence Studio's August release, and of course I said yes! I am excited to be among the first to play with these stamps and stencil, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to introduce these products to you.

Picket Fence Studios sent me a big, beautiful bunch of fun things to play with--seven new stamp sets and a stencil, to be exact (including a big handful of their WONDERFUL blender brushes), and I have to say I went kind of hog wild with them. I managed SIXTEEN cards, in total!

Picket Fence Studios is sort of a "new-to-me" stamp company, and in my initial foray into their web store, I managed to find some great, both snarky and sweet sentiment stamps from previous releases that I had to have. I'm pairing those with all my new things for this release, and I had a blast making with all of it.

I feel a need to divulge to you, guest designing with brand-new, never before seen items is a more-than-fascinating experience, because you are left to your own creativity with EVERYTHING. There's no one's ideas to play with, no photos to refer to...YOU are the one to make it happen. At first it was a bit daunting, if I'm honest. But, once I got into things, I was able to just run with it, and I had TONS of fun! 

The first stamp set that really spoke me was the new Leaf Mandala stamp. I'm a sucker for a mandala--I love the structure, the design variations...too good. This one is perfect for fall, with its fallen leaf motif. I made two cards with this one right away, and I know I'll be making tons more for the season, because this was so easy to get big results with. 

I made this--

I stamped the image onto the center of a panel of 80# cardstock with Versamark ink, did partial images above and below it, and heat embossed everything with copper embossing powder. These lines are pretty delicate, but they held up beautifully to the embossing process, retaining all those tiny details.

My next move was to color all the tiny leaves with my Zig clean-color watercolor brush markers. I did this super quickly, not worrying about every nook and cranny, just getting color onto the leaves.

Then, I ink blended Blueprint Sketch Distress Oxide in around the mandalas to create a background. 

At this point I was ready for the fun part.

I grabbed my water sprayer bottle and even though I was working on cardstock and not watercolor paper, I sprayed the heck out of the center of the mandalas, loosening all those watercolors and letting them spread over the front of the card panel. I kept a paper towel handy, to keep things from getting out of hand, but the important thing to me was to set those colors loose to run free.

I love the way the reds and yellows almost explode from the center of the mandala, connecting with the one above and below. I set this all aside to dry, and when I came back to it, I recolored the leaves a bit, because they did dry back just a little too light.

When it came to a sentiment, I didn't want a solid sentiment strip that would hide any of the "good stuff", so I white heat embossed a sentiment from the Good Vibes stamp set onto a vellum strip. and wrapped it around my panel. After popping up the panel onto a white top-folding card base with some craft foam, I added some white Nuvo drops to the vellum, and this card was done!

For the next card, I went for a very easy to produce card that counts on bold color to make a statement.

I made this--

More mandalas = more better! Pardon the horrid grammar, but it IS true...

So again, I stamped and heat embossed mandalas onto cardstock, but this time I used both clear and gold embossing powder.

After adding the gold heat embossing, I did a light ink blend with Broken China Distress Oxide ink around the mandalas to create a background. I then stamped more mandalas with Versamark ink and heat embossed those with clear embossing powder, then added more Distress ink on top of that to give  a subtle mandala background that really catches the light beautifully. I made sure to leave myself room to white heat emboss another sentiment from the Good Vibes set, which I added as soon as I made sure my background was sufficiently dry.

Coloring the gold mandalas couldn't be quicker or easier. I used autumn colored Distress Oxide inks and my Picket Fence blender brushes (OMG, SO SOFT) and layered them, going back and forth from light to dark, with the darkest part at the center.  I finished this one by adding just a few gems and sequins.

The contrast of the bright blue with the orange and gold colors gives me the feeling of falling leaves blowing in a bright, crisp autumn sky. This is a bold statement that came together so easily--I can't wait to do more of these with different color combinations.

So, these are the first of the cards I came up with for this release. I hope I was able to inspire you to create some beautiful fall cards of your own with this Fall Mandala stamp. Stay tuned over the next weeks as I share more of this terrific August release from Picket Fence Studios, and be sure to go to their web site to see even more of the release, available as of TODAY, August 14, 2020!

Thanks so much for stopping by.

All Best--

Richard