Birds of Paradise

Welcome back, friends! It's July 15th and time for a new Beautiful Blossoms Challenge.  Here is our inspiration photo:

Gorgeous colors and I used the flower: Birds of Paradise as my theme.

Trying to capture the ombre in my card, but not being very successful. 

I used the following to create this card:

-Hero Arts Birds of Paradise Bundle;

-Ranger Distress Watercolor Card Stock;

-Altenew 36 pan Watercolor Set;

-Altenew Elegant Sayings & Die Set;

-Altenew Obsidian Black Pigment Ink;

-Spellbinders - Embossing Folder of the Month April 2024-Faux Stitched Petal;

-Distress Ink Rustic Wilderness.

Thank you for stopping by and please come join us at the Challenge this month!

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Lawn Fawn for Paper Funday

Hi friends! Can you believe it is July already? I should be making Christmas cards now...but I was in a summer mood.

For this month at The Paper Funday Challenges one of our sponsors is Lawn Fawn! Who doesn't love all the cuteness of Lawn Fawn?

I choose 3 Lawn Fawn sets (stamps and dies): Gleeful Gardens, Oh Gnome and All the Speech Bubbles and mixed and matched them for these 4 cards. I stamped multiple images on Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Card Stock with Altenew Obsidian Black Pigment Ink. I added Altenew Clear Crisp Embossing Powder while still wet and heat set. All images were water colored with Altenew Watercolor 36 Pan Set.

The base cards each have a different Masking Stencil from Taylored Expressions: Oval, Rectangles, Circles and Square Windows. I just bought a few Gina K. Designs inks and wanted to try them out with ink blending. I just used 2 on each card: Turquoise Sea and Jelly Bean Green. I really liked how they smoothed out after blending.

Then the fun began - just playing with the images and seeing what look good to me. So fun! 

Thanks for stopping by and come join us over at the Challenge page this month and let's see what you create. Anything Goes!

I will also be submitting to NBUS for I have not used the Lawn Fawn or Gina K. products before.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Happy Peony

Welcome to The Beautiful Blossoms June 2024 Challenge! Our inspiration photo for this month was striking:

The pinks, oranges, apricot colors with a touch of green were just beautiful. I had recently won a free stamp from The Colorado Craft Company and I choose Kris Lauren's Happy Peony. This is a large stamp and would probably fit better on a 5 X 7 card, but I kept with my A2 sized card and cut off a bit of the image.

My card today was an attempt at no-line watercoloring. Honestly, no-lines for this image was not my favorite and I went back in with a darker shade of the colors to add in the lines. I want to try again with my usual heat embossed lines on watercolor paper for my next card because this is a lovely image to color.

I choose a blue watercolored sentiment I had in my stash to add in more blue to the design. Not my most successful coloring, but we are always learning, right? 

Come join us at the challenge this month and we can learn together!

I will also be submitting to NBUS, for I have not used this stamp before.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

New Home Card

Welcome to The Paper Funday Challenge for June 2024! If you have never heard of Dr. Digi's House of Stamps (One of our generous sponsors for the month) you really need to go check out his site! He has such fun and unique images...really unique...and if you love to color, his digital stamps will be perfect for you:

I choose a really inexpensive digital stamp, Paint Roller, for I wanted to make a New Home card and a paint roller was the perfect image to create a background. I downloaded the one image, copied into a Word.doc., resized into different sizes, turned and twisted, so I had a background of paint rollers. Then I printed with a laser printer onto Ranger Ink's Tim Holtz Watercolor cardstock.

For each of my card I painted a swash of watercolor behind the roller and painted the handle grey. Any watercolor will do.

The "home sweet home" sentiment and die came from The Stamp Market's Happy Home & Die set. It has wonderful sentiments for a new home with coordinating dies (my favorite!).

"Congrats on the New Digs" from Spellbinders A Cut Above the Rest Sentiments was used on the inside of the card above and the outside for this card below:

The oval shape is from Spellbinders Essential Modern Ovals. I cut the paint brushes with it, as well as a background piece of black cardstock. I cut the black in half and layered the 2 pieces in the back for a modern graphic look.

This fun sentiment above comes from Simon Says Stamp set called Home Sweet Home.

Here are 2 cards I made with the same oval shapes, but layered differently. The paint swashes were my idea of what wall colors in a new home could be!

Thank you for joining me today and please stop by The Paper Funday Challenge this month and play along....Anything Goes!

I will also be submitting to NBUS for much of what I used today has been in my stash and waiting to be used:

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Poppy Gems

It's May 15th, 2024 and time for a Beautiful Blossoms Challenge! Here is our inspiration photo with burgundys, oranges, corals and dusty rose.

I used Penny Black's Poppy Gems stamp set, black heat embossed onto the smooth side of Ranger Ink's Distress Tim Holtz's Watercolor card stock. I bought the pack of 50 for I use it all the time!

To watercolor, I used Mungyo's Professional Half Pan Watercolor set.  When I had finished watercoloring, I felt some areas were too light, so I went in with Distress Watercolor Pencils and darkened the inner corners, etc. I used Aged Mahogany, Rusty Hinge and Spiced Marmalade. Just colored with the pencils - no water.

To finish I used Gansai Tambi Starry Colors in #901 Blue Gold and my smallest stylus and just dabbed gold watercolor in and around the floral images. The Happy Birthday sentiment (from Honey Bee stamps - Inside Snarky Birthday Sentiments  and coordinating Honey Cut Die) was stamped with Hero Arts Unicorn White Pigment Ink onto Lawn Fawn Black Licorice paper and sprinkled with Ranger's Princess Gold Embossing Power, then heat set. I do like white under the gold for heat embossing!

Thank you for joining me and I will also submit my card to the Penny Black Saturday Challenge!

And NBUS for I have not used the Distress Watercolor pencils before.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Flower Shoppe

Welcome to May 2024 Paper Funday Challenge where I am creating with the Twist! I have been on The Paper Funday Design Team since June of 2021 and this is the first time using the twist (I think!). The twist is Flower Shoppe.

I recently acquired this lovely stamp and die set from Concord & 9th called Flowers A La Carte. It seems to be retired, but available on reseller sites.

I did the usual - stamped with Altenew Obsidian Black Pigment Ink onto Ranger's Distress Watercolor Card Stock on the smooth side. Before it had a chance to dry I sprinkled with Altenew's Crystal Clear Crisp Embossing Powder and heat set.

Now I can just have fun watercoloring with my Mungyo Professional Half Pan Watercolors and die cut all the images with the coordinating die. The background was made with the same stamp . It has a brick stamp and a "road" stamp. Stamped with a brown and lightly ink blended with Distress Ink Tea Dye.

The Happy Birthday sentiment comes from Honey Bee Snarky Birthday stamp set and coordinating Honey Cut Die. Black onto kraft color paper for a change.

I like to add an extra image to the inside, too.

Here's my second card: 

The awning is colored differently and I used a sentiment from the Flowers a La Carte stamp set.

Another extra colored set of images on the inside!

Flower Shoppe is such a good twist and so much fun to create! Thanks for joining me today and come play along at The Paper Funday Challenge for April 2024.

I will also be submitting to:

for I have not used this in the past.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Lilies for April

April 15th 2024 - not only tax time, but also time for a new Beautiful Blossoms Challenge - where anything goes as long as a floral is the focal image. Here is our gorgeous inspiration board:

When I saw the lilies I knew I wanted to use the new Clear Stamp and Die of the Month Feb. 2024 from Spellbinders called Lily Arch. It is a really pretty set and I love when a die cuts out all the "in-between" bits of the image. 

The teal set was stamped with Altenew's Obsidian Black Pigment Ink onto Ranger's Tim Holtz Watercolor Card Stock. I used Altenew's Crystal Clear Embossing Powder over it while it was still wet and heat set. The image below was stamped on the same paper with Versamark Ink and set with Ranger Ink's Princess Gold Embossing Powder.

Both floral images were water colored with Mungyo's Professional 48 Pan Watercolors and Silver Black Velvet #8 and #6 watercolor brushes. 

Both cards have an ink blended background over a stencil I found in my stash. Unfortunately it has no name etched in it. I do love a good circle stencil for a subtle background! I ink blended Ranger Ink's Distress Ink Tumbled Glass on the teal card and The Stamp Market Cactus on the gold/green card.

I almost always use a die with some sort of design texture around the edge...for 2 reasons: 1) I get a nice straight edges and 2) it brings interest and movement to the card. For these cards I used Penny Black's Creative Dies #51-706 semi-circle stackers. 

Thank you for stopping by and visiting my blog today. Come join us...we'd love to see your florals!

I will also be submitting to: NBUS

for this is the first time I've used the Lily Arch set.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.