Create Along With Us - March 2016

For one of the cards I created today, I was inspired by a few sources. The first one is Kay Miller from the Papertrey Ink Design Team featuring new March Release items. She made this gorgeous card and the colors were so appealing that I just had to include a bright green and blue on my card.  Once I saw The Challenge #64's Color Scheme over at Always Playing With Paper, I went with it.

I started by stamping the butterfly image  onto Canson Bristol Watercolor Paper in Versamark and heat embossing it with Ranger Gold Tinsel Embossing Powder. This Pen Patterned Butterfly is from Stampendous and it came with a set of masks for each of the three butterfly images in this set.  There are also coordinating dies found here.  After I did the heat embossing, I placed the mask over the image and created the soft blue background using a Mini Ink Blending Tool with Simon Says Stamp Maliblue Ink trying to keep the most intensity near the immediate area surrounding the butterfly.  Once I had that completed, I colored in the Butterfly using my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens in May Green, Persian Blue, Cobalt Blue and Deep Blue (Navy) for the body and the spots on the wings.  Let me add here, that the Japanese seem to have a couple of their colors mixed up from what I am used to. What they call Cobalt is what I would call Persian Blue and what they call Persian Blue, I would call Cobalt.  There's a few other colors that don't seem the same as what I'm used to so I'm glad I have all my caps swatched.

Once the butterfly was dry, I used my powder tool on the upper right side to make sure there was no moisture left and stamped and heat set the greeting which is part of the Tulip Time Stamp Set from Papertrey Ink.  I just love that font!

Once that was all dry, I still felt it was missing something so putting a drop of reinker with a mist of water, I picked up some of that and created the navy spatter.  I let that dry and then added some spatter using Martha Stewart's Liquid Gilding in Gold and let that dry.  It dries quickly but has some pretty significant fumes and should only be used outdoors.  And it's best to use a throw away kind of paint brush unless you want to have to get a cleaner from your hardware store. Just do whichever one works for you.  It's a very pretty touch.  I could have used my Finetec Mica Gold Watercolors, but I wanted to try the Liquid Gilding.

When everything was dry, I cut a top folding card base from Papertrey Ink Vintage Jadeite Cardstock and a mat from Audrey Blue Cardstock from Simon Says Stamp which has turned out to be the exact same color as Hawaiian Shores from Papertrey.  I assembled it all together and got inspired to make a second card in the same design but different colors.

For this one I used the Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens in Light Carmine, Deep Violet, Purple and Light Violet.  Purple is more along the lines of what I would call Magenta and is one of only 4 colors I added to my set of 36 pens.  I also added Persian Green, Light Sugared Almond Pink, and Emerald Green.  I added this watercolor panel to a top folding note card made from Papertrey Ink Berry Sorbet Cardstock which seems to be my current favorite color.  Both of the cards are bright and springy and will make someones day a bit brighter.

I'll be entering the top card into the Always Playing With Paper Challenge #64 as well as the Create Along With Us March 2016 Papertrey Ink Challenge. There are lots of challenges this week and next week has a challenge and blog hop for Papertrey Ink so I'll be back soon with my next project.  I hope everyone is getting to enjoy some gorgeous Spring weather today!