Toucan Do It! A Collected Crafty Collab Blog Hop

Welcome to our first ever Collected Crafty Collabs (say that 10X fast!) Blog Hop! If you are following along, you have just come from Lisa Wolfe’s blog.

This crafty collabs hop is the brainchild of my new found crafty friend, Karen of Misplaced Mojo.  She left a sweet message on one of my blog posts about one day collaborating on a hop.  I immediately jumped on that idea along with Virginia of Passions & Distractions and Marie of Another Cardmaking Blog. This was the  beginning of a wonderful crafty friendship!

Our hop will run for 7 months starting with this one.  The overall  theme of these hops is to use supplies that you have never used or those that you have squirreled away — thus the photo in the blog graphic.  There’s an inside story about that squirrel but that’s a story for another day! The wonderful thing about this hop is that you will find a variety of styles of cardmaking.  We have very experience card bloggers and also those that are fairly new at blogging – the main thing is that we support each other in the process!

The theme for June is Critters and/or Stencils.  I decided to do both.  I do not have many critter stamps as I focus mostly on florals — so I decided to gather all unused/hardly used critter stamps into one bin.  I had my daughter pick one stamp set from the bin and  I will use whatever she picked!

She chose this cute Toucan Paradise stamp set from Concord & 9th. Then I dug through my stencils and picked an old stencil from Simon Says Stamp called Leafy Frames, which I’ve never used as well!

For the background, I ink blended three colors of Distress Oxide inks ( Twisted Citron, Lucky Clover, Evergreen Bough )on a 6×6 watercolor paper.  The concentrated the blending of lighter green in the middle working outward with the darker green. After I was satisfied with my inkblending, I took off the stencil, I spritzed the stencil  generously with water and put it down on another panel of watercolor transferring the residual ink. On the main ink blended panel, I used a finger dauber and dabbed little circles of different greens in the middle creating a bokeh effect.  I inkblended more color on the sides, splattered it with paint and called that panel finished. I also used some left over inks to smoosh into another panel which I will save for another project.

I wanted to create a cute Toucan couple sitting on a branch so I took out my gelli plate to try a technique I have never tried before.  In order to create a mirror image of the original toucan, I used the gelli plate. I stamped the main toucan image on the plate with Salty Ocean Distress ink. Then I took a watercolor panel and laid the panel on top transferring the image in reverse onto the paper.

The effect was not completely perfect so I took some ink and smooshed it onto my mat and with a waterbrush I used it to fix the blotchiness.

I stamped out the yellow toucan using Scattered Straw Distress Oxide Ink. Both their beaks were stamped Picked Raspberry & Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide Inks. The original Concord & 9th did not come with an ouline stamp so in order to make the Toucans stand out more, I outlined them with a .10 copic multi-liner pen.

 If you would like to start at the beginning of the hop and view the complete hop list, Karen of Misplaced Mojo has got you covered!

Next on the hop is Sam McLean from Scotland! Sam has his own unique style. He is eager to learn how to share his passion for papercrafting on social media. I encourage you to hop on over to his channel linked here and show him support in his new adventure! We hope to see him grow through the months as he hops along with us!

Hope you were inspired by the wonderful creatives on this hop and that you will join us on the next 6 months!

‘Til next time!

❤️

Anna

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