A few days away from work, spending time with family, and finding time to create and play with new supplies, tools and techniques has done wonders for my stress level.
Add to that the incoming blizzard that is giving us a snow day tomorrow and you’ve got one relaxed gal here!
It gave me time to view the Supermoon…the full moon coincides with the moons perigee (that is it’s closest point in it’s path as it revolves around the earth each month). We went to Gull Pond and watched the moon rise. It was surprising clear and the moon looked like a gigantic orange ball!
My husband took this picture. It was amazing in person.
Then we had a nice dinner and I got to crafting!
I just could not wait to play with some new things!
One of my favorite stamp sets in the new Occasions catalog is the Hanging Garden stamp set. It’s hanging succulents with some fantastic sentiments. There are 3 different baskets, 5 sentiments and then some small butterflies.
I’ve colored this in using my Stampin’ Blends, because why not? They are fun to use. I’ve used my greens, my pinks, my crumb cakes and my yellow.
I extended the hanging cord with a fine tip sharpie marker. I took a line sketch class over my vacation and it was ridiculously fun. The point was to embrace imperfection. Notice that there are two lines there and both of them are crooked. It looks good too, right? I learned that the lines should not be straight or evenly wavey. I also learned that if you draw a second imperfect line that is not the same imperfect line as the first one, it works even better to achieve that “look” you are going for.
I actually made a line sketch of a house during the class and watercolored it. Then I bravely shared it on Instagram with the #bcclasses and #embracetheimperfections. I looked at other pictures from the class that other brave souls shared and they were all perfectly imperfect like mine.
I’ll be doing more of that line drawing in my scrapbooks and on my cards. I am embracing my imperfections in 2018!
I wanted to share a close up of this card so you could see the coloring. I also spritzed it with some Shimmer Mist and you can see that a bit in this picture. It is so pretty in person with that little spritz of shimmer. Stampin’ Up! does not carry that product. They should!
Can you see the pink tips on the green leaves of the succulent? I was surprised it showed up. I really like how that looks.
For my second card, I could not resist using some of the Painted With Love designer paper. It is specialty paper and has gold foil in some of the patterns. It’s crazy pinks all thrown together with that gold foil and it is fabulous paper.
It almost looks hand painted doesn’t it? I cut it at a diagonal and added some of the new Berry Burst Metallic Edge Ribbon to cover the edge. The sentiment came from Petal Palette and it is stamped in Melon Mambo with a Melon Mambo enamel dot heart. I’ve made the paper the focal point of this card. The sentiment is merely a final touch.
I love this paper!!!
My next two cards use Altenew stamps. I’ve been taking a watercoloring techniques class to see what new things I can learn and what I didn’t know. It’s just great fun to take the classes and add little details and new techniques to your arsenal of creative tools.
For this card, I create a background using watercoloring. I love the effect you get when you do this. It makes a card dreamy. I used Altenew’s Painted Butterflies on top of it with a sentiment that I heat embossed. That is glitter tape on the side for some bling. The card layout is CASEd from the class that I took, but I didn’t have the specific stamp sets and colors they used, so it has my own twist to it. I just used the butterfly outline from that set and I really like the effect you get using the outline on the watercolor background.
My last card is another watercolor technique using an Altenew set. This is a pretty set. I embossed the image in white embossing powder, then filled in the empty space with water using my Aqua Painter and then plunked different colors of ink onto the water and let the water do the work to blend them. I like this as well. I’ll practice this one more and watch the video a couple more times to get it right, but for a first try at the plunking technique, I’m pretty excited about how it turned out.
Plus the sentiment is to die for!
The craft card stock and the twine add a natural element that makes me really like this card. Again, that is CASEd from the class, but I used my own twists and I’m not disappointed with the end result!
Finally, the last card uses one of the prettiest stamp sets I own from Simon Says Stamps…Under the Sea. I also used a background watercolor technique on this, but then I embossed these gorgeous jelly fish in white on vellum and it really is pretty.
Aren’t those stunning jellyfish? Whoever designed this stamp set did an amazing job. It’s beautiful.
I will most certainly be making more cards with all of these stamp sets. I have so many ideas in my head for different ways I want to use them.
I have also really been enjoying my watercoloring. I intend to share some of those techniques in some videos very soon.
Thank you so much for stopping by!
Sale-A-Bration and The Occasions Catalog
You can view the new products online at mystampingstore.com!
How does Sale-A-Bration work?
For every $50 you spend, you get to select a product from the Sale-A-Bration tab at mystampingstore.com for free! There are two products that you can only get when you spend $100. My strategy was to spend $150 in product all at once so that I got $15 in free hostess rewards and either 3 free $50 SAB products or 1-$100 product (like that Amazing You die set with the celebrate die cut) and 1-$50 product (like the coordinating Amazing You stamp set that has the floral image and the YOU among many other fabulous images and sentiments). To get the free SAB products, you can shop from any current catalog and the clearance rack. You don’t need to limit your purchases to the Occasions catalog, although there are some fabulous new goodies in there!
Happy stamping!
