SSI Water Color Wednesday

I just love watercoloring! I bought the Forest Friends set because my kids are pretty much obsessed with foxes and hedgehogs right now and these two are pretty darn cute.  I pulled out my inks and aquapainters because this is my favorite way to watercolor. I pulled colors from the Retro Fresh DSP since I knew I wanted to use elements from that paper as an accent.

To make this scene I had to think through which images were going to be foreground and background. I stamped the hedgehog first with Stazon ink and promptly stamped the same image onto a Post It note to create a mask. You may remember my post earlier to this card where I describe how to mask images. This is just slightly more complicated because I have some overlap in my images. Next I cut out the mask, placed it over the hedge hog and then stamped the fox where I wanted him to go. I stamped the fox on a Post it note and cut that out for a mask as well. After placing the mask over the fox, and keeping the hedgehog mask in place I stamped the tree image in different heights.

Now my images were all set and I was able to get to the fun part! Since I used watercolor paper I was able to use more water with less peeling of paper. I did a wash of the lighter tone and then added less diluted amounts of ink in the shadow areas. Don't feel the need to have every speck of paper covered in ink. A little white is desirable.

Hope you like this card! Check out the other watercolored creations at the SSInk blog for even more inspiration.  

Supplies:
Stamp Set: Forrest Friends (c:133851. w:133848) Chalk Talk (c: 130634, w:130631)
Ink: Baked Brown Sugar (131174), Gumball Green (126861), Tangerine Tango (126946), Coastal Cabana (131175), Sahara Sand (126976), Stazon Jet Black (101406)
Cardstock:Whisper White (100730), Coastal Cabana (131297), Soft Sky (131203)
DSP: Retro Fresh (132993)
Accessories: Aqua Painters (103954),. Chalk Talk Framelits (129983), Uniball Signo White gel pen (105021)

SSI March Card Sketch

 Here's a sneak at the card sketch for March. I love how wide open it is. There are seriously so many directions you could go with this sketch.

For the card sketch this month I thought it would be a good idea to show how great the card kits are. They are perfect for when you are in a rush for a last minute card or if you simply just don't know where to start. I literally made this card in under 5 minutes. I decided to stay true to the  kit and only use what is in it. This particular kit is called Hip Hip Hooray. Its a steal at only $19.95. It comes with cardstock stickers, stamps, an ink spot, mini paper clips, pre-printed card bases and envelopes.

Make sure you check out all the fabulous cards made by the other fabulous SSInk DT members and join in on the fun. You can upload your projects at the SSink blog.

Supplies: Hip Hip Hooray Card Kit

Back from wherever with a christmas card

I got this idea from Splitcoast and I'm sorry to say I don't remember
who posted it! We made this in my card club and since we were just
making the one card we used lots of different embellishments.

Stamp Set: Holiday Tag Team
Card Stock: Old Olive, Whisper White, Dashing DS Paper, Real Red
Ink: Old Olive, Real Red, More Mustard, Tempting Turquoise, Sahara Sand
Accessories: Fresh Favorites II Buttons, Fire Square Rhinestone Brads,
Clear Buttons, Linen Thread

Choose Your Family Promotion

Stampin' Up is doing their Choose your Family Promotion again. This is the one where if you've been thinking about signing up to be a Stampin' Up! demonstrator you really don't want to miss. If you sign up between now and Sept 30th you can choose any classic stamp pad set ($57.95 USD value!).
Anyone interested that doesn't have a Stampin' Up Demo of your own feel free to contact me. Just address it with "SU color family promo" in the RE field. By the way this is the promotion that tipped me over the edge.

Priceless a la Double Vanilla

Last week I got my first order from the new catalog. Some of the things I ordered were things I've been meaning to order for a long time. I got the Priceless classy brass template and the empressor stylus (for dry embossing). I already had the other stylus. So I was playing around with it last week. I have some customers that want to learn this technique and I am practicing. So you will probably see a lot of dry embossing for the next month. The Dry embossed part in this card is the silver flower. First I stamped it with the Silver Encore ink and then matched it up with the template, then embossed it. The silver ink tends to rub off a bit so I used my Painty pen to fill in the spots that weren't totally shiny.

The background was made with the "Double Vanilla" technique from Technique Junkies. I can't print the directions but if you are in one of my groups I can teach it in a class.

I also just have to mention that I love the new ribbons that Stampin' Up came up with for this catalog! The textures are wonderful.

Stamp Set: Priceless
Card Stock: Very Vanilla, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky
Ink: Very Vanilla, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, Encore Silver
Accessories: River Rock Double Stitched Ribbon, Priceless Classy Brass Template, Empressor Stylus, Stampin Dimensionals, Painty Pen

Baby Elephant

Another case of mine from this weekend. This time it was from the Fall preview guide. I changed the bottom of the card to be scallops made from my slit punch. I colored in the image with my watercolor wonder crayons and painted with the aquapainter filled with Future. I'm making this for a swap for convention using a different color scheme. I think I will try watercoloring with just water on my next try.

Stamps: Year After Year
Card Stock: Orchid Opulence, Only Orange, Taken with Teal, Whisper White
Ink: Stazon Black, Watercolor wonder crayons
Accessories: Slit Punch, Stampin Dimensionals, 1/2" circle punch, aquapainter

Blessed

This is one of the pages I made with my scrapbooking
club back in February. It's hard to see on the lettering but
we used the kissing technique on the title.
The swirls are embossed with the now discontinued
Old Olive ep. And the flowers are embossed with the
discontinued copper ep. (Sniff) We also made our own
Old Olive brads by embossing them.

Stamp Sets: Doodle This, Office Accoutrement
Card stock: Not Quite Navy, True thyme, Close to Cocoa
Ink: Versa Mark, True Thyme, Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery

Bridal Card

I saw this idea a while back and loved it, so I just had to case it.
I found I got more contrast by stamping and embossing on Apricot Appeal
then sponging in the white ink than stamping on the white glossy and sponging on
the Apricot Appeal. What do you think?