A Touch of Grace

Hi everyone, today is day two for the purse series I’m featuring this week.  This is my favorite purse in the series.  As I did yesterday, I’m including in this post a picture of the stamps used to create the purse so that you can see the size of these stamps as well as the stamp numbers.   This week I’m going to be featuring four purses that I have made and, you guessed it, these purses are going to CHA with me so that all of you who attend can see them in person.

This is my daisy purse.  It consists of six stamps, three of which are shown in this picture.  The two flower clasps were stamped from the Violet Border stamp I featured yesterday on the violet purse.  They were water colored, cut out and left to dry over night.  The following morning I applied Crystal Effects and let that dry for a couple of hours.  I did that three times to build depth without it getting cloudy.  The tip is to apply Crystal Effects in thin layers several times allowing it to dry thoroughly between each layer.  The mesh you see in the middle of the purse is a mesh background stamp, shown below.  The purse stamp itself is the outline of the purse, also shown below.  In this series, I’ve tried to provide backgrounds that enhance the designs and colors of the purses.  The blurred images are almost like a water color itself!  I love the splash of gold on the left side, it brings out the gold in the bottom of the purse.  Looking closely at this image, you can see Kaiser pearls in clusters just above the flowers. Joan’s Garden’s sells these beautiful pearls.

This photograph is a picture of the inside of the purse.  To make the purse I first stamped the purse outline on water color paper and embossed it, I then cut a piece of white mulberry paper for the lining to be placed on the inside of the purse.  I used the stamp that I used on the lower portion of the front of the purse to stamp the daisies on the Mulberry paper.  Mulberry paper is sheer, like a very thin cotton and so beautiful.  I used it on the inside of the purse to give the appearance of a sheer cotton lining like you would see in a formal clutch purse.  I stamped the Mulberry paper with Versamark, embossed it and then water colored it.

To give you pictures with a little more detail I’m including the upper and lower portions of the inside of the purse in two separate pictures.

The colors came out beautifully vivid on the Mulberry paper, I was very pleased with the results.

Here are the stamps minus the sentiment from Stampin’ Up!.  You can substitute any sentiment stamp you want, I used this verse because I felt this is a beautiful gift to give someone who may be ill or feeling down.

When I return from CHA, I will be featuring a tutorial on how to make this purse from start to finish with pictures as well as written instructions.  We’ll start with embossing, I’ll show you how to mask the front of the purse to make it appear as  just one stamp has been used.  We’ll emboss it and then I’ll show you how to make the actual shape of the purse.  We’ll then size and cut the Mulberry paper and I’ll show you how to emboss that as well.  I’ll show you step-by-step how to paint the leaves, the flowers, and background on the front of the purse, as well as the Mulberry paper on the inside of the purse, I’ll provide a list of the Tombow markers that we’ll use.  I’ll also provide a list of all the supplies you’ll need to complete and assemble the purse once you’ve completed the watercoloring.  I’ll show you how to attach the Mulberry paper to the inside of the purse and to emboss the outer edges, and lastly we’ll adhere our floral clasps, as well as our beaded purse strap to complete our design.  Does it sound like fun?  You’ll be amazed at how beautiful your design will be.  Today is day two of the four day series.  When you’re ready to give it a try, you’ll have four different designs to choose from, or you can make up your own design with any stamp of your choosing.  Look at the picture above, do you see the stamp in the lower right corner with the daisies?  That stamp was made specifically to fit within the purse.  Two of the purses I’ll be featuring this week were designed with stamps that were made for the purse.  The fourth purse was designed with a background stamp that I chose and I’ll explain how I did that as well.

If you like this design, you’ll want to check back tomorrow for design three in this series.

• Stamps:  Stampin’ Up!
• Paper:  Canson 140 lbs. cold-pressed water color paper, White Mulberry Paper
• Ink:  Versamark; Versapen
• Accessories:  Tombow markers, heating tool, watercolor brush, blending pen, Ranger gold/gold tinsel EP, Crystal Effects; pearl beads, dimensionals, Pearl Ex Pearl White Powder, Gum Arabic, craft knife, self-healing cutting mat, Dazzling Diamonds,Kaiser Pearls