Guest Blogger: Mariko Brown

Hello, everyone.
This is Mariko Brown, a scrapbooker and card crafter who loves stamping.  I am so thrilled and overwhelmed to be one of the guest bloggers here for the launch of Flora & Fauna along with such celebrated artists like Julie, Amy, and Sandy.
 
Today, I am sharing with you several cards that I made, but let me give you a little background of myself first. I have been enjoying papercraft for nearly 10 years now, but unlike Sandy who is a Copic Marker master, I am really terrible at coloring. Yes, I tried. I even took Sandy's lesson a couple of times. Believe me, she is an extraordinary instructor, but it seems that I just don't have the patience for coloring.

So here's my take on Teepee set.

Tiling is one of the things I love to do with my stamps. I somehow have the patience for stamping repeatedly. For a more solid and clear impression, I used the good old positioner tool to stamp twice each.

More tiling here. The speech bubble "hello" is from Savvy Stamps.

You can achieve an extremely simple and clean look by adopting a monochromatic color scheme and choosing not to color in.

The stars and the shadow stamps come from the Adventure set, and the "thanks" phrase is a rubber stamp from Savvy Stamps.

The advantage of choosing not to color? You can make a whole bunch of cards very quickly. Here are my mini thank you notes finished probably within 20 minutes.

 

One tip from me if you are making cards with just one ink color and without coloring in is to pick the right stamp set. Solid stamps are always the good candidates. For outlined stamps, some would look "unfinished" if not colored.

 

I avoid those kind of stamps, but from time to time I encounter ones that I can't resist. The Llama set was the one that I saw at CHA and that I had to have. Look at him! His cuteness made me dare to reach for my Gansai Tambi and paint brushes!

 

I heat embossed the llama, the gift boxes, and the balloons with black powder so the water resistant quality would help me keep my colors in the boundaries. I masked all the foreground images with sticky notes and heat embossed the clouds with white powder before any water coloring. Again the water resistance of the heat-fixed embossing powder helped me. You don't have to get around the clouds because they repel the color.

 

Thank you everyone for stopping by, and Cindi and Lara for having me here today.

 

Mariko, thank you so much for being one of our first guest bloggers! Your cards were very inspiring - so simple, elegant, and sophisticated. We appreciate all of your work in putting together this post for us. We are excited to be giving away our Teepee set to one lucky winner and all you need to do is leave a comment on the blog. Winner will be announced Friday, April 7th.

 

 

 


24 comments

  • My daughter would love this card for she loves to tent camp.
    Great idea

    Mary Strauser
  • Such a pleasure to meet you on here and oh I love the black and white. I am in love with the first card! The small stamps are wonderful and since I am teaching my 4 year old granddaughter to stamp this would make such easy little cards for her to make. Hey you can never start to early! : )
    Have a great day

    Kathy Moore
  • all cards are so sute!

    ukifuna
  • Your card is darling. Sweet and simple. Love it.

    Anne Sturgeon
  • So cute!! It is wonderful with a monochrome design.

    scargo.shiori

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