Happy Monday!
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are ready for our second week with the Buttons challenge at Inky Paws!

I had a lot of fun making this card! 

I have loved seeing all the different cards come out using the Distress Resist Spray...but I don't own that so I wanted to try and see if I could recreate it somehow with what I do have.  It's not quite the same...but the effect is still really cool.

The cool feature of the resist spray is the varied texture it leaves on your paper.  So in order to replicate that, I decided to try splattering water all over my card front and then applying clear embossing powder and heat setting it.  The water splatters offer different size droplets in a completely unpredictable and random pattern.  I did this several times, I think about 4 times before I got the look and quantity of splatters I wanted.

Once it was all heat set, I took several colors of distress inks in a rainbow order and swiped them across my card front.  The embossing powder resisted the ink and the texture of the watercolor paper help give some great detail to the swipes.  I buffed off any ink that may have been sitting on top of the embossing powder and then cut that panel out with a stitched rectangle die.

Using the Believe in Unicorns set, I stamped and colored in one of the images and then trimmed it out.  I embossed a sentiment onto a piece of vellum and layered my unicorn on there as well.

Then came the mission of the buttons.  I have a serious lack of buttons in my stash so I decided to do what I always used to do and make them!  I used a 1/2 inch punch and inked up a bunch of papers in the same colors as the background.  Stacked 4 high and then used an eyelet punch to make the holes!  I clear embossed each button to get that shine and then tied a little string through the center of each button and lined them up across the middle of my card before layering my little vellum focal piece over top.

I hope you'll join us for this fun buttons challenge!  Just a few days left!!

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Hey!!  Happy Tuesday!
It has been forever since I've had the time to participate in Tuesday Throwdown!  I can't believe I've missed so many of their challenges...but I am putting my best foot forward and working hard not to miss so many going forward!

So that starts now with our newest challenge starting today which is Seeing Stars!  We want to see you feature a bunch of stars on your project!!  And our awesome sponsor is Bugaboo!!

For my card, I decided to pull out my Gansai Tambi watercolors which I haven't played with in months!  I realized while making this card how much I've missed watercoloring!  Need to do that more often.  But with my paints, I did a very washy galactic type background using various shades of blue and a little purple.  I did 2 layers just to get a good vibrant color and depth.

Once that was dry, I pulled out my Big Bang Classic Stars Creative Screening from Winnie & Walter and applied some Pure Platinum Nuvo Mousse to my background so I'd have some shimmery silver stars!  It's so gorgeous!!  I'm in love!

While all that dried again, I die cut a bunch of clouds with my Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud Border dies in both white and vellum.  I layered these onto my starry background and then added my little Chibi Unicorn image from Bugaboo that I had colored up in coordinating colors with my copics.

Next to my sweet unicorn, I added a great sentiment from the Paper Smooches Magical Sampler stamp set that I white heat embossed onto some black cardstock and then used the same star stencil and nuvo mousse to add a few more accent stars on the clouds.

I love it!!  So colorful and starry!

I hope you'll join us this week for this fun Star challenge!!

Thanks so much for stopping by! <3 read more →

Hey there!  Happy Friday! 
Is everyone ready for the weekend!?  I know I am!
There is one image in this release and she is adorable!!  This Little Holly Unicorn will be so cute on Christmas cards this year!  You'll love her!

So our challenge for you this month at Sami Stamps is White on White.  This one is always such a challenge because I love color.  And often my whites will just mush together and lose all detail.  So I decided to just keep my card super simple.

I took out a stencil from Simon Says Stamp and covered it with embossing paste.  Then sprinkled on a bunch of Silver Pearl embossing powder.  I know the name says silver, but when it's melted, it gives a really great whiteish pearl shine, as you can see from my card.  While the embossing paste dried, I worked on coloring up my image.

To stick with the white on white theme, I colored up my sweet unicorn to be white with a grey mane, and then colored the berries and leaves their traditional colors.  To give her a resting spot, I cut 2 layers of vellum to match the inner design of the stencil and layered them together, white embossing my sentiment on the top layer.

Then just foam mounted everything down and added a few white sequins!

I hope you'll join us for this White on White challenge at Sami Stamps!  Just remember to use a Sami Stamps image on your project!!

Thanks for visiting! <3 read more →

Hey hey!!
Happy Monday everyone!!
We are starting a brand new Inky Paws Challenge today and this time it is a fabulous sketch!
I seem to be on a unicorn kick right now because there have been a lot of them on my blog lately :)  But hey, that's okay.  One can never have too many unicorns in their life right? :)

This sweet little unicorn is from the Believe in Unicorns set.  I love everything about that stamp set, which is why I purchased it.  But then I never got the chance to play around with all the fun images!  So this sketch felt like the perfect opportunity to do just that.

I started with my background.  A few months ago I did a background where I smooshed my ink onto my acrylic block, misted it and then just placed it onto my watercolor paper and let the water and pressure do all the work.  I loved that technique so much, I decided to do it again for this card.  This time though, I did the smooshing twice, heat setting the ink in between to try and keep them from mashing together and turning to mud.  I love that the texture of the paper creates some super fun designs in the coloring and that the results are different every time!

Once the background was dry, I took that little star in the stamp set and silver heat embossed it randomly across the panel.  Then set that aside to work on my images and the rest of the scene.  I used some Inktense watercolor pencils on my unicorn for some quick and bright coloring.  Then cut some stripes of glitter paper to create a super sparkly rainbow.  I also die cut some clouds and embossed one of the sentiments onto the largest one.  It just barely fit, but I was able to line it up in a way to squeeze it on there!

Then it was just a matter of putting everything together to fit the sketch!  I absolutely love how it turned out!  I hope you will join us for this months challenge!  Just remember to use some Newton's Nook products on your card!!

Thanks for stopping by!! <3

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