CommUNITY: Inspiration from Rick Adkins
Hi friends! Today we are here with an installment of our monthly series, CommUNITY, where we share artwork from artists who we'd love for you to get to know. CommUNITY is about embracing and honoring the creativity of individuals who are often underrepresented. By sharing art from diverse groups of creators, we hope not only to bring inspiration to this paper crafting community we all love so much, but to also support and empower individuals to ge their authentic selves as they create and share. Look for a new CommUNITY guest artist right here on the blog each month. Today, our talented guest is Rick Adkins.
Hi, everyone I am Rick and I have the honor of being with you for this month’s CommUNITY installment. I was super excited when Dana and Pam asked me to share with you this month. So, before we get into the projects, I need to introduce myself.
As I said my name is Rick Adkins and I live in North Alabama with my husband and five fur babies (4 cats and 1 dog). I have been crafting and creating art for as long as I can remember. I graduated college with a BFA in printmaking. I was actually the first in my family to graduate college. After and before graduating I had always done art shows and art fairs during the summer. During the summer of 2015 I was doing my normal art shows and decided that I needed to come up with a smaller priced item to sell during the shows. So, like many of you I had watched videos on YouTube about card making and started making cards. One of the first stamp sets that I purchased was actually from Hero Arts. So, that was the start of my card making obsession. People came weekly to the show to purchase my cards, as soon as I started making cards, I started making video tutorials on YouTube. And the rest as they say is history.
Now let’s get into my cards. I had so much fun playing with the products from the CommUNITY line I actually made three different designs using these products.
For my first card I stamped out the Encouragement Sentiment Strips stamp set onto some Luxe White Watercolor Paper in watermark ink and covered it with Hero Arts Clear Embossing Powder and heat set it. After that had dried, I stamped the Holding Together cling stamp over the clear heat embossed panel. I covered the clear ink this time with Hero Arts Gold Embossing Powder and heat set it until it was smooth and melted. Once the panel had cooled, I took my Hero Arts Liquid Watercolors and created my skin tones for my panel. To create the different skin tones I used different combinations of the following Liquid Watercolors: Strawberry, Dandelion, Orange, Indigo, Moss, Mulled Wine, Purple, and a little Jungle Mist. I mixed each color with their complementary colors in various degrees to create each different skin tone. For a couple that weren't quite right I did mix in a little Azalea Ink. I started out by doing very light washes of color and dried each layer between until I got the desired intensity of color I was after.
Next after the panel had dried completely, I used my fussy cutting shears and cut around the outline of the hands and arms. Then I sat that to the side and stamped the Encouragement Sentiment Strips stamp set a few more times on various colors of cardstock. I did have to do a little ink blending on some Dove White cardstock to get the perfect shades to match my different skin tones. For the ink blending I used the Cool Brown Ink Cubes in different values to create the different tones. For the others I used Cup O’ Joe cardstock, Woodland cardstock, Sand cardstock and Pitch Black cardstock. I heat embossed the sentiments in Detail White Embossing Powder. I cut all the strips out with the Sentiment Strips Fancy Die. Once all the sentiments were cut out I lined them all up along the card front and glued them down. I then popped up the Holding Together embossed panel and added a sentiment. I finished the card off with a few Clear Hero Hues Enamel Dots.
For my next card since I had all the sentiment strips left from the last card, I decided to attach them to a card front of Dove White cardstock coming in from one side. I then cut off the excess strips from the left-hand side and added it to a top folding A2 card base made from Woodland cardstock. To add a little focal panel to the card I created an alcohol inked panel on a scrap of Classic Layering Vellum Cardstock and added a little gold leaf to the tacky parts of the drying alcohol ink. Once the panel was completely dried, I cut out the panel with Nesting Infinity Hearts Dies. I added a strip of plain cardstock behind the heart and a sentiment strip on the front that I cut down to fit. I then colored some of my Clear Hero Hues Enamel Dots with alcohol markers that matched the heart die cut and scattered them around the card front. I then added another piece of Dove White cardstock to the inside of the card base to finish it off.
For my last card I went super simple with it. I stamped out the Holding Together cling stamp once more onto a piece of Dove White cardstock in Intense Black ink. But instead of coloring the arms and hands, I decided to color the outside around them. I picked a couple different blue alcohol markers and colored around each section of the stamped image and blended a little here and there for interest.
I then cut the panel down to 3 ¾” x 5” and added it to a mat of Sand sardstock and to the extra Woodland cardstock card base I had left. Since I had sentiment strips left over from the first project (and just so you know I still have a ton left to use for a while) I added one to the bottom third of the card front. I finished the card off by adding a trio of the Clear Hero Hues Enamel Dots at the bottom of the card front.
Rick, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful projects and talent with us today!
Here is where you can find more of Rick's fresh cardmaking ideas and techniques:
Blog
Website
Facebook
YouTube
Instagram
TikTok
Pinterest
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1 Responses
Linda Crowley
February 28, 2024
What!! No fur baby pictures We will let you off with a warning this time, LOL ❤️