Hey everyone!
Just wanted to give you a peak at the card I have posted over at Sami Stamps!
We've changed the format a little over there and now every Friday between releases will be Fun Friday with one of the design team members!!

I have a gorgeous no-line watercolored card up over there now for you to check out!

You also have a few days left to enter in the Sparkle challenge for a chance to win a gift certificate to Sami Stamps!!!  Just be sure to use a Sami Stamps image on your projects!!

Have a fabulous weekend!  <3

Hello!!
Happy Thursday!

Today I want to share a little bit of info on how to really make your stamped images pop!
It's a technique that I've played around with a bit in the past, but it's also easy to forget how much of an impact it really makes on your cards.

For this project, I am using the Feathers and Florals stamp set from WPlus9.

These images are so gorgeous, but unless you have really stellar inks, it may be hard to get a good crisp stamped image.  To help fix the splotchy stamping, I used pencils!

I know a lot of people will use their copic markers first and then add all the detail with pencils.  I just don't have any copics, and I have much more control using pencils anyhow that it was easy for me to skip the marker coloring all together.

To start, you need to stamp your images.  I like to stamp the image off on scratch paper a few times and then do my official stamping.  This seems to help prime my stamp, even after it's been used a few times.  Since most of my ink is super old Stampin Up pads, it takes a few tries to be sure the stamp is fully covered, and then I get pretty decent stamped images.

After stamping everything out, I die cut them all with the coordinating dies.  I probably could have waited until I was done coloring, but I was just excited that I actually have the coordinating dies for this set, and let the joy of playing around mess up the process.  But it still worked!  The images were just a little more tricky to hold on to :)

To add the detail and depth, I pulled out my new Prismacolor pencils!  These pencils are amazing!  So soft and creamy...easy to break!  But learning how to handle them gently just takes practice!

I selected 3 pencils in each color family that I stamped to work on my images with.  The lightest should match the color used to stamp your image so that you get a nice solid even blend.  Once you have them selected, start coloring the way you normally would!  I usually start with my darkest first, so I colored in the "shadows" of the flowers in the centers and around the edges of each "petal."  Then blended that softly with my medium color, and finally smoothed it all out with my lightest.

To help pull out a highlight, you can use a white pencil and just do simple little flicks in the highlight area to brighten it up!  And voila!  Gorgeousness!
Here is a comparison of the large flower with and without the pencil detailing:

As I said before, they are gorgeous left as is when stamped...but to add that little bit of punch, try doing some shading!  It will add a whole new level to your card!

To finish off the card, I used a stencil to emboss the background and then layered that onto a woodgrain stamped panel.  I used a few stamps from HoneyBee Stamps Beautiful Life stamp set and did a multi colored embossed sentiment onto a strip of vellum.

Just realizing now that I've done 2 "Beautiful Day" cards in a row...whoops!  Must be a good sentiment right now :)

For the red border frame, I took the darkest red pencil that I used for the shadows and colored the edge of my panel.  Then blended it out smooth with some Gamsol.  Simple and now it matches perfectly to my card!

Thank you so much for stopping by!  I hope this will help you to look at your solid stamps a little differently, and see how much you can change those images with a little extra added detail! <3

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Crafting When We Can #135-Anything Goes
    Fusion Card Challenge-3rd Anniversary

Happy Tuesday!
Time to get rolling again with a new challenge at Tuesday Throwdown - Snowflakes!  We're supposed to get a little snow here today...not sure if that will happen or not.  Christmas break was lovely since we had snow the entire time!  Granted it was only a dusting of it...but our porch stayed covered the whole time so every time we left the house, we saw snow :)

Our fabulous sponsor this week is the lovely A Day for Daisies, and they've provided us with gorgeous images to use on our projects.

I decided to use Little Cats Christmas for my card.  After a pretty tough emotional weekend, it was nice to sit back and color these cuties up.  I kept my card relatively simple, with a light ombre grey background using Hickory Smoke.

The sentiment strip was colored with some Prismacolor pencils and blended out with some gamsol to get the nice gradient color to it and then I white heat embossed the sentiment from Altenew's Beautiful Day stamp set.

I added a few vellum die cut snowflakes around the card, and put little tiny sequins in the middles.

The finishing touch was glossy accents on the little blue lights!

I hope you will join us for this challenge!

Thanks so much for stopping by! <3

Happy New Year!!
It's good to be back to work...though I really enjoyed taking December off.  It was awesome having Matthew home with me for a few weeks where we could sleep in and veg out all day...ahh...loved it.

But life must go on and we are now back into the full swing of things.  And with that we have a super adorable new release today from Sami Stamps called Snowman Friends!  We're also starting our January challenge to add some sparkle!  This one should be pretty easy since no card is complete without some shine!

I'm still trying to shake the cobwebs out of my brain to help get my creativity flowing, so decided to keep this card nice and simple with a fun blended background and a simple colored image.  I used the Frost and Whiskars image for my card today (of course!  I can't resist Sami's kitty images...they're my weakness..)

For the coloring, I pulled out my brand new Prismacolor pencils that Matthew got me!!  They are luscious...and might take me a little bit to get used to.  But I'm excited to play around with them a bit more and see all the wonderful things they can do!

To finish off the card, I added some little sparkly snowflake dots around the snowman as well as along the snow hills, and then scattered some sequins across the background.

I hope you'll stop by Sami Stamps and join in our Sparkle challenge!  Just remember to use a Sami Stamps image!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Creative Fingers #122
    Paper Sweeties Snowman Photo Inspiration
    Simon Says Stamp-New Something (new pencils, new image to color!)
    Word Art Wednesday #264-Anything Goes

Thanks for visiting! <3