Thankful Watercoloring

This Friday and Saturday I'm holding my monthly stamp camp. This is one of the cards that we'll be making. Watercoloring is always a hit!

When I saw this set in the current holiday mini catalog, I knew I wanted to watercolor it. They highlighted watercoloring techniques at this past summer's Stampin' Up convention, and what I really brought away from it was the need for white space within the watercoloring. I also realized the importance of actual watercolor paper, and using enough water to move the color around. I hope that I can help pass along some of my insights onto my stampers/painters.

I stamped the sentiment with the help of my Stamp-a-ma-jig and even with that, I held my breath while I pushed the inky stamp down on top of my newly painted image. :)

I am very pleased with the softness of the Groovy Guava paper behind the striped paper and liked that it was an unusual color choice that tied right in.

Sympathy CASEs

Ky's bosses' (two brothers) mother passed away this week and I needed to make a card for each of them from us. Thankfully it's so rare that I have to make a sympathy card that I needed some inspiration. So I turned to Splitcoast and searched the gallery for "sympathy" - and what a wealth of cards came up as a result! I based my cards on shelart's beautiful card and I'm so pleased with how they turned out.

Both cards are watercolored and use the Define Your Life set as well as flowers from the hostess set, Oh, So Lovely, and with visual texture provided by the Sanded background stamp on both the main image and the card base.

For watercolor choices I used ink from Purely Pomegranate + Ruby Red (yes, really!) for the berries and blooms, Wild Wasabi + Always Artichoke for the stems, and did a background/surrounding wash of River Rock. The little tags on the side are Close to Cocoa on River Rock cardstock.

A sweet treat for Halloween

September's stamp club host wanted to focus on Halloween. We're making 2 projects at each club, and these cute little bag toppers are going to be one of them! I don't know what candy she's supplying to fill them up, but I think I'm going to have to check out which candies either coordinate as they are, or have coordinating wrappers to go with the topper. :)

Because these were my samples, the Frankenstein piece and the Boo piece were both watercolored to show different versions of Booglie Eye sets, but the Boo sample was done on Whisper White cardstock, while Frank up there was watercolored on watercolor paper.

I created the Boo topper first, and I should have started with the watercolor paper because I KNOW that it is so much better to watercolor with. However, for some reason I did not do that, and then I was going to create a new image piece on watercolor paper and switch it out with the original, but I think I'll leave it so the stampers can see why they would want the watercolor paper instead. That's what they'll be supplied with, but I feel like it might help them see why there's a difference.

ETA: This project never got to make its debut to the stampers because the September hostess had her baby! Does this mean I can eat the candy now? ;)

Stamp-a-Stack card 2

This is the first time I've gotten to emboss with a mixture of clear embossing powder and Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I discovered it's almost irridescent on a dark background, but sort of rainbow/holographic-y on a light background. I do love that the glitter doesn't fall off when done this way, but it's also not at all the same as using 2-way glue with the DD glitter.


My stampers will make 10 of these on Saturday at my Stamp-a-Stack for World Card Making day. I'm excited and I know my stampers are looking forward to it, too!


The following photo is a close-up of the main image piece on this card so you can see the glitter effects a little better. :)

Stamp-a-Stack card 1

This is card #1 for Saturday at my Stamp-a-Stack for World Card Making day. We will make 10 of these in addition to 10 of a second design. There was no way for me to photograph the main image piece of this card to show it off, but it's so pretty in person! It's stamped on Shimmery White card stock. This paper is so pretty! I don't think we've ever used it for a stamp camp project, and I'm excited to show it to my stampers.


The main image is stamped in Blue Bayou and is from the set Season of Joy except for the snowflake which is from Punch Pals, and is stamped in Soft Sky and punched out with a 3/4" circle punch. That piece was then mounted on a dimensional. The Wild Wasabi strip was inked up in same-color ink and wheeled with the Whimsy wheel which reminded me of swirling snow.


I absolutely love the untraditional colors and clean lines of this card. I hope my stampers do too!