Monday Guest Designer | Jenny Colacicco | Alex Syberia Design Digital Stamps

Hello friends,

Welcome to my Monday Guest Designer post! I absolutely ADORE today’s guest designer! Jenny Colacicco amazes me with her creativity and I am truly delighted to have her as a guest designer today. Feel free to check out her blog and have a quick look through her Instagram feed.

Guest Designer – Jenny Colacicco

Hi Everyone, it’s Jenny Colacicco here and I’m thrilled to be guesting on Alex’s blog!  It has been a joy to watch Alex’s releases over the months, even playing with some of her designs in physical form with The Hedgehog Hollow and The Gray Muse. Her loose style is so forgiving for coloring with any medium you like, and I just love the addition of so many sweet treats in this new release alongside the florals. YUM!  It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of digital stamps.  You can get a new release in a few seconds and they really are easy to use. The best thing about digital stamps is that with a few tweaks here or there, you can make them giant or tiny, repeat them or flip them – make them work for you!

Projects

Both of my card projects today feature wet mediums – watercolor and Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers.  I printed my images on 5 x 7 Bee Cold Press paper.  I use a black and white Brother Laserjet printer and feed the paper into the top tray when printing. I open the images in Preview on my Mac and just print, sizing the image on the paper using the print preview and settings.  I’ve created a 5 x 7 watercolor print setting so this is super quick and easy to size, and I just adjust the % scale prior to printing.  This is super simple, no need for fancy editing software, just download, open and print! Tip: You don’t need to use a laser jet, however if watercoloring inkjet prints, be sure to heat set or leave over night to fully dry.

A Beautiful Heart

My first card today features A Beautiful Heart.  It’s a delicate wreath in the shape of a heart, with Alex’s signature loose florals. It’s detailed when printed to fit onto the front of an A2 size card landscape, but still easy to watercolor.  I used Altenew Pan Watercolors and first added a pale layer of color in each of the flowers and leaves.   I then dropped a darker layer of the same more concentrated color into the centres.

When dry I went back in with a fine brush and added concentrated colored details and flower centres.  I went over all of the leaf vine lines with a pale green and completely but roughly filled in the centre of the heart and round the edges with pale grey. Before it dried, I added some black splatters with a brush just to tie in with the darker outline.

For my sentiment, I used a Taylored Expressions Simple Strips sentiment heat embossed in WOW! Metallic Rich Pale Gold and die cut out.  I just thought this heart was perfect for an anniversary card – don’t you!?  I popped the sentiment up on foam tape and then mounted the panel onto a card base.  I added a few Gloss White Nuvo Crystal Drops for subtle classy embelishment without lots of glitter.

Sweet Love Cupcake

My second card features the Sweet Love Cupcake   These cupcakes look so yummy! I’m lucky to work in NYC and often walk past the Magnolia Bakery on the way to the office, where you can see them icing their cupcakes.  I always love in particular seeing those two or three tone icings in pastels, and so I went for that look here. I’m using my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers, direct to cardstock, and blending them out with either another color, or a little water.

I used Fluorescent Pink, Pink, and Light Blue.  I love this combo, and the colors combine to create a lovely purple lilac.  You can see where I blended them together. I made sure to use darker full strength color under the swirls of icing to add dimension.  I also added a touch of grey on the cupcake wrapper and some pale  yellow and orange on the cake sponge itself – it’s a yellow cake 🙂 For some shine / highlights I added some white gel pen as well.  Doesn’t that cherry look good enough to eat?!