Messy Watercolors...and Kitties!

Hi Everyone!  Happy Friday!!!
I'm excited for this weekend, are you?  Matthew has his possible last flag football game on Saturday (unless they win, then their in the playoffs for next week...fingers crossed!)  Then on Sunday I get to hang out with my bestest friend in the whole world and be crafty!  I'm so excited!

But first, I must share a card with you.  Have you ever thought up an idea and started to execute it, not really knowing how it would look in the end, debating it the whole way until that last piece is added and it's so amazing you want to cry?  Yeah that happened with this card.

I did some things I don't normally do on a card, second guessing them each time and doubting that they would all work together in the end.  But I'm so glad I stuck it out.  I can't tell you how happy this card made me when I put everything together.  It just...well...kind of takes my breath away :)

Ok, I may have been dramatic...but look at that card!  I feel like I got everything right on it for once.  I love a lot of the cards that I make...I wouldn't share them if I didn't.  But this one...this one takes the cake.

So to start, I took a piece of white cardstock and spritzed it from the side with some Amethyst Heidi Swap shimmer spray.  I wanted there to be a concentration on one side and then have it fan out from there, so I also added a lot of larger dots on that left side to build up that idea.  Then I cut of scallop border from the Mama Elephant Borderlines Trio set from black and layered that behind my spritzed panel.  I also added a thin strip of black glitter paper along that edge.

For my cups, I did a fun watercolor technique onto a half sheet of watercolor paper.  First I pressed my distress ink onto my plastic mat...I used Seedless Preserves, Milled Lavender, and Picked Raspberry.  I misted all that ink, and then pressed my paper down onto it, swirling it a little to get the color to move.  When I pulled it up I had nice coverage on my paper, but wanted more, so I misted the ink a little more and pressed my paper into it again.  Then I dried it a little so the ink on the paper wouldn't move so much anymore, and continued to press the paper into the ink left on my mat.  This helped give it some speckles and variance in the colors.  I also added little drops of black to the puddles of ink on my mat.  I didn't want there to be a lot of black, just little dots.

Once that was all dry, I added some water droplets to lighten and remove some of the ink, and also splattered some of the Heidi Swap shimmer inks in the black and amethyst for a little bit of sparkle.  Set that aside so it could completely dry and worked on my kitties.

I adore these little kitties.  They are so precious and reminded me of Storm and Cloud.  Sami always gets it right, I swear!  So using my ShinHan markers, I colored them up like my babies.  So precious!  Oh, the image is the Cup Kitties 4 image from our most recent release at Sami Stamps!

After everything dried, I cut it all apart so I could piece them all together.  I did add a little bit of Seedless Preserves around the edges of the bottom cup, and Picked Raspberry around the edges of the top cup, just to help separate them a little.

The final thing I added was this Prayers die cut from Hero Arts and Simon Says Stamp.  I just got it in the mail and couldn't wait to break it out!  I took some of the Amethyst Heidi Swap shimmer spray and painted it onto some watercolor paper and waited for it to dry.  Then die cut it out, along with 2 more in just regular cardstock.  I layered all of that together, which gives the die cut some really nice dimension, added it to my card and covered it with glossy accents.

By the end of this card, my fingers were covered in purple and black ink and I had to be really careful to not snudge it all over my kitties.  But sometimes getting inky and messy can produce the best product!!

I hope you've enjoyed this sweet little card!  Remember we have an awesome Anything Goes challenge running at Sami Stamps so go join in!  Just be sure to use a Sami Stamps image :)

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    CAS-ual Fridays #144-Tic Tac Toe (spritzing, coloring, die cutting)
    Chocolate, Coffee, Cards #101-Animals
    Creative Fingers #95-Anything Goes
    Word Art Wednesday #204-Anything Goes

I'm also entering this into the Damsel of Distress' Hop to Stop.  This is a great blog hop to help draw attention to Domestic Violence.  I encourage you to check it out!

Thanks for visiting! <3