OCC Watercolor – Not Handpainted

The recent lessons in the Online Card Classes Watercolor class have been phenomenal! I’m amazed by the talent in the cardmaking community! However, after I “painted” a cardinal and a flower today using some of the recent lessons, and pouted a bit, I realized I needed to put my training wheels back on! So I’m sharing a card that’s technically from Day Six in class.

LovelyMums

For me, the training wheels are heat embossed lines to help hold the water. I heat embossed the flowers from the Mama Elephant Lovely Mums set with white embossing powder on Strathmore 140lb coldpress watercolor paper. I colored them with Distress Inks and then fussy cut them. The die cut circle was stamped with a sentiment from Penny Black Special Wishes and  heat embossed in gold powder. This card draws on the design shown by Jennifer McGuire in the Day Six lesson.

Supplies:

CAS3: Day Seven

I’m sharing a card inspired by one shown by Jennifer Rzasa in today’s Clean & Simple Cardmaking 3 lesson. Jennifer’s card featured a beautiful painted feather.

CAS3: Day Seven

I wanted the simplicity of stamping (and wasn’t sure I could pull off painting a feather!). I stamped my sentiment, and then used a brush to apply some water to the paper. I colored the cityscape stamp with the Pitt Big Brush and stamped into the wet watercolor paper. The result was a subtle blur. I wanted to keep some of the cityscape detail. This is definitely a technique I’ll use for other stamps. From my brief investigation, it seems to work better with rubber stamps than clear ones.

Supplies:

Pinky Promise

Today, I’m sharing an encouragement card that combines two recently-released Mama Elephant stamp sets – “Honey Bunny” and “True Friend.”

Mama Elephant Pinky Promise

I paper-pieced the bunny pair (blue and pink for boy and girl), and they sat on my work table overnight. I kept wondering how to anchor them to the card base without them getting lost. After resting on the problem, I decided to use the Poppystamps window showing a gray, rainy day as a metaphor for a “tough time” that the bunnies would be handling together. The “True Friend” set is fabulous, and I can see using those sentiments, both paired and alone, on a lot of future projects. For the raindrops, I used the stencil I recently created cutting the Crafter’s Workshop Blank Stencil material with the Memory Box “A Little Rain” die (I also used the stencil on this card).

Supplies: Studio Calico patterned paper

Retrosketches #102

I’m sharing a card I created for the latest Retrosketches Challenge. I flipped the sketch horizontally because I thought it worked better with the orientation of the umbrella.

retrosketches-feb2014

Using the Crafter’s Workshop blank stencil material, I created a rain drop stencil with the Memory Box die. I also created an umbrella stencil using the Up and Away umbrella die cut. I added Squeezed Lemonade Distress Ink to the stamped umbrella through the stencil, swiping from the top down. It’s raining here (pouring!) in the Pacific Northwest, so some cheery colors were in order!!

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Mama Elephant Photo Challenge

I couldn’t resist entering the Mama Elephant Challenge this month. The photo inspiration is yummy with pinks, silver, white and jewels.

ME-Challenge

MEPhotoInspiration

I paired the adorable monkey from “Up and Away” with die cuts from “Party Kit.” I covered the white clouds, cut with “Landscape Trio,” with vellum to soften their look. I stamped the monkey, sentiment, and heart with Versamark and heat-embossed using silver powder.

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