Tag: Simon Hurley

Class projects

Crop & Create Sept 2023 – Ranger Ink

Anne S

Such a fun class with Simon Hurley and Ranger! We got to play with Solar Paste for the first time, along with some Lunar Paste, and different techniques using them both. Oh boy that Solar Paste is exquisite on the black cardstock, although the purple is sooooo hard to photograph well on my iPhone.

I was a bit heavy-handed with the gold lunar paste mixed in with the solar paste, but I love the results with the smooshed half using the residual product on the stencil!

This photo shows the purple colour a bit truer to life … although it changes depending on the angle you view it on in the light – it’s truly beautiful!

Using a blending tool with the lunar paste through the stencil for just a light covering of the paste is a great technique and is fun to give different texture to the snowfall thicker texture.

Things I enjoyed:

  • Using dye inks to paint the critters was really fun and easy to do without too much effort – just my sort of colouring!
  • I loved the idea of smooshing the residual paste on the stencil to create a beautiful sky effect on the dark cardstock – just stunning in real life!
  • I really loved the effect of the monochrome card just using one ink pad colour in differing intensities to get the three different layers.
  • A great paced class by Simon, and easy to keep up – and I really enjoyed the tips for working with these pastes. I’ll definitely be buying more of these, that’s for sure!
Class projects

Crop & Create Fall 2022 – Ranger Ink

Anne S

Mini class #8 was with Simon Hurley and Ranger. This was a fun class, and I loved that we got some stamping foam and Lunar Paste to play with. For the first card below I chose a metal organiser to use for my texture, and the second butterfly card I used a paisley background stamp – I really love the results of that one!

Things I enjoyed:

  • I love having the opportunity to play with stamping foam again – I’ve used it previously and had mixed results, but this time it was much better using some of Simon’s tips.
  • I loved how any sort of products can be used to create texture on the stamping foam – so many things around the home that can be used.
  • I loved the opportunity to play with Lunar Paste … and the fact that we received a blue colour was the icing on the cake for me, the colour palette was right up my alley! It’s also a versatile basic stencil that will be super useful in the future too.
Using scraps

Creating with ugly backgrounds

Anne S

I’ll be honest I created this background maybe 9 months ago, and never really liked it. The colour choices didn’t work for me, and it was too busy for my liking. That’s the great thing about experimenting, though, if we don’t try colour combinations that take us out of our comfort zone we never learn from the experience. In this case I love the stamp set (Sketched Bouquet by Simon Hurley) but I didn’t love the Nuvo shimmer powders I used.

I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, though, even though it was unloved – and over the last few months I’ve noticed other designs just using a portion of busy backgrounds and got the idea to chop up the background for other uses. What was a very ugly (to me) background became three cards I’m pretty happy with overall … it’s a reminder to never give up on something, you just never know what its future holds.

Here’s the original background:

Sketched bouquet by Simon Hurley

And here are the three cards I made out of it:

Here I used Plum Punch (and Ivory) cardstock and a happy birthday die by Gina K Designs – I ink blended the ‘happy’ die cuts with a bit of Plum Punch ink to dark it up slightly. The matte gold cardstock is from Tonic.

I’ve not very good at doing clean and simple cards, so this was a challenge – but I really loved the elegance of the finished card. I’ll add a small sentiment once I’ve decided what to use the card for. I used my Scor-pal to score lines down the sides, then once everything was stuck down I felt it was a bit plain, so I threaded a matte gold strip underneath the boxes and it just finished it off beautifully. I really like this one!

After I’d made the first card, I wished I’d thought of embossing the cardstock first – so I decided to do that with my final strip of the background, and I really like the effect. I kept the sentiment really simple this time around, and I’m pretty happy with the result of this one too. Amazing how different cards can look with just some small changes made to the design! Once again using Plum Punch and Ivory cardstocks and Plum Punch ink by Gina K Designs, and the sentiment is from the Beautiful Butterflies 2 stamp set, also by Gina K Designs. I used the Tin Tile embossing folder (retired) by Stampin’ Up!