Think watercolour

Blackberry Bliss, Rich Razzleberry and Tip Top Taupe.  Sound delicious?  They sure are!
Don't take my word for it - pop over to Just Add Ink where they are flying these colours as their challenge. The design team have outdone themselves this week and every card is a real delight.

I have been trying lots of different techniques lately, including watercolouring, and these colours were such fun to use.

 

The flower and sentiment are from SU "Best Thoughts" stamp set - a really lovely set with two sentiments and a butterfly as well. 

 

I used watercolour paper for the background and just played.  In my first attempt I was rather heavy handed with the inks, but I made the flowers deeper too and really liked it, but that card has already been delivered.  I used more water this time and kept the colours paler.    Such fun working out how to make splotches and blobs.  The flowers were done much the same and then I just added a bit more colour where needed.  

 

I have never had much success with the white gel pen, but I recently found a Gelly Roll pen in my stash and I found it gave me a better result.  I gave the flowers a quick lick with the Wink of Stella and called it done.

 

Hope you like it.

Mary

The end of the drought ?

After a lapse of some six weeks I finally made a card.  I have been raiding my box of cards for recent birthdays, but didn't have one for a special friend.  It took some time to get back into the mood, but with inspiration from a lovely card by Christine Blain, here it is:

 

and a close up of that glossy sparkle:

 

The stamp is "Best Thoughts" from Stampin' Up and I have water coloured it with "Lovely Lilac" - a retired colour now but just perfect for my friend.  I then coated it with Glossy Accents and sprinkled a little Dazzling Diamonds on while it was still wet.

 

Yesterday, I heard that neighbours were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary and that certainly required a card.  Their wedding theme all those years ago was "Apple Blossom Time" and that was the music they danced the waltz to.  With not a lot of time, I decided on a shaker card and visualised the tree with apple blossom falling from it.  I had a container of "Flower Soft" which I thought would be perfect, but which turned out to be far too dense to see the tree behind it, so I moved on to glitter.  Unfortunately my pink glitter was extremely fine and covered the window sheet totally, so I punched out some tiny pink glitter hearts and popped them inside.  In hindsight, I see that I should have put more hearts in, but the lady was delighted with it and that's the main thing.

 

 

The stamp sets I used were Lovely as a Tree, Memorable Moments and Lovely Lace, and the card stock was Pink Pirouette and Whisper White.  The Window Frames were used to cut the window.

 

Here's hoping I get to blog a bit more often,

Mary