Hello!

Hello everyone!  Happy Friday!
It was quite the surprise to wake up to snow on the ground this morning...wasn't really expecting that.  But it's been cold enough here that it is a welcome sight.  Somehow snow always makes the cold more tolerable.

We are starting a new challenge today at Sami Stamps!  This month we want to see you use Circles on your card!

I'll admit...I got everything put on this card and was working on the sentiment before I remembered that we had a challenge...so I had to rework the sentiment a little bit.  But it ended up being perfect to put it on a circle and turn it into it's own little embellishment.

To start the card, I embossed the background with the Simon Says Stamp Zig Zag stencil.  You need to have one of those rubber embossing mats in order to do this so that the rubber squishes the paper into the stencil.  I had to add a few paper shims to get the right pressure, but it turned out perfect!

The 3 little strips are cut with the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles dies and then I did a really light swipe with some blue watercolor to get a brush stroke look for the background.

The images are Love Butterfly and Pretty Flower.  I joined them together on my computer and then resized them to fit on those little die cut stripes.  Once they were printed, I used some distress inks and watercolored them in, trying to make the flower appear white.  I haven't quite figured out how to do that, but I think this one turned out pretty good.  Adding a super dark shade to the shadow areas really made the white feeling pop.

I stamped my Hello sentiment onto a 1" circle and then clear embossed the entire thing with a double layer of Ultra Thick Embossing Powder.  Finished the whole thing off with a few Sparkling Clear Sequins for just a touch more shine.

I hope you will join us this month for our Circles challenge!  Just remember to use a Sami Stamps image!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Addicted to Stamps and More #227-Make Your Mark
    Freshly Made Sketches #273
   
    Word Art Wednesday #268-Anything Goes

Thanks for visiting!  Have a fabulous weekend! <3