Simon Says Stamp Designer Spotlight

I am very excited to be the Designer in the Spotlight this month at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog and I'll be here every Wednesday all month long. This week we are featuring Winnie & Walter products for our theme of Girl Power.  You don't have to use Winnie & Walter products to enter the challenge, but if you have some, we would love to see them used.

I also wanted to mention that Simon Says Stamp generously provides a $50.00 Gift Voucher each week for each of their blog challenges. I actually won one of these right after Christmas and got to splurge on a purchase. That was a lot of fun!  Thanks again to Heidi for providing that each week.

Winnie & Walter have several sets of Sentiments and I love their The Big, The Bold & The (fill in the blank) Series of stamps.  I have quite a few of them with the coordinating word dies. I only have one Winnie & Walter stamp set with images, so I decided to try making a spring-like friendship card using Happiest of Holidays.  I make and use a lot of encouragement cards or "Just a Note" kinds of cards and the sentiments in this set are very sweet.   

Sometimes, as a card maker, I have a tendency to make things more difficult than they need to be.  My original plan was to make something more complex and when I was finished, I didn't like it at all.  So for my second attempt, I wanted to try out this stamp set.  This card is very simple but still very pretty. The combination of colors on the card (Neenah Desert Storm and Simon Says Stamp Surf Blue) with the soft watercolor is just right - not overdone or underdone. 

I started by heat embossing my images onto a panel of Arches Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper.  I did the branch first, then the bird house and bird and once I finished water coloring, I added the sentiment.  With heat embossing it is important to use some type of powder tool between each layer of embossing to maintain a clean image.  The powder eliminates static and also picks up any stray oils from your hands that the particles might stick to. I like to use baby powder and a big fluffy brush but you can use an Embossing Magic Powder Bag, corn starch or even kitchen flour.

I colored this with a combination of Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers and Distress Ink.  I used simple coloring with a Silver Black Velvet Paint Brush in Size 2 with a tiny bit of water with markers in Light Blue, Blue Grey, Light Grey and Grey.  I have the equivalent of the 48 set.  I started with the 36 set and added the additional colors individually.  Simon Says Stamp carries the sets and each individual color of the Zigs. That means you can get a few and try them out, or get a set and add in any extras that you want. The background was done with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink on an acrylic block, more water and a Size 6 Silver Black Velvet Paint Brush.  When it was dry I hit it with some Tsukineko Sheer Sparkle Shimmer Mist and let it dry again. 

Once everything was dry, I die cut the panel with the largest Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle Die. Then I cut the Desert Storm Cardstock with MFT Blueprints 15 (discontinued) and made my card base from Simon Says Stamp Surf Blue. I assembled everything with Kokuyo Dot Runner Adhesive. I thought about adding a few sequins to the card or some Nuvo Drops but I felt like that would have been too much fluff for such a simple style. If I hadn't painted the background, I think it would have been okay.

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  The supplies I used are linked below for your convenience (Affiliate Links may be used at no additional cost to you).

Arches Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper 9 x 12 #140 Shop at: SSS	Cuttlebug Shop at: SSS	Distress Ink Mini - Tumbled Glass Shop at: SSS	Kokuyo Long Dot Runner Adhesive Shop at: SSS
Neenah Desert Storm #100 Shop at: SSS	Silver Black Velvet Size 2 Shop at: SSS	Silver Black Velvet Size 4 Shop at: SSS	SSS Antique Gold Embossing Powder Shop at: SSS
SSS Stitched Rectangles Dies Shop at: SSS	SSS Surf Blue #100 Cardstock Shop at: SSS	Teflon Bone Folder Shop at: SSS	Tsukineko Sheer Sparkle Shimmer Spritz Shop at: SSS
Versamark Ink Shop at: SSS	W&W Happiest of Holidays Shop at: SSS	Wagner Heat Tool Shop at: SSS	Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers - 48 Set Shop at: SSS

The Challenge #91

This week at The Challenge we have a sketch up for you! I have only recently been doing Sketch Challenges but I am enjoying using them as my starting place for my cards.  I hope I never get stuck in a rut but sketches are a great way to be inspired by a fresh approach to card making.  The Challenge on the Always Playing With Paper Blog has a sketch challenge about once a month.  This allows me to use the same products in a different way than I might have previously. Let's face it, stamps and dies are a significant investment of both time and money, so I want to stretch mine as far as I can.  

I wanted to use a combination of Green and Navy for my card so I started by water coloring the panel using Lucky Clover Distress Ink. Using a No. 8 Round Silver Black Velvet Brush, I wet the panel in a circular pattern and then added a heavy concentration of color and let it move with the water.  I put a few drops of reinker on an acrylic block to get this heavy concentration.  I left it alone (as much as is humanly possible for me) so I could get those hard, fringed edges. Once the watercolor was dry I hit it with some Tattered Angels Iridescent Gold Shimmer Mist and let it dry completely before die cutting the panel with the Gift Card Layers Die from WPLUS9.  The largest die in this set cuts a full A2 sized stitched rectangle panel.  

I cut the widest and 2nd widest strips from the My Favorite Things Horizontal Stitched Strips Die out of Dark Indigo and Gold as well as the "Celebrate" die from Gold Foiled Cardstock. Next I stamped the "You Did It" phrase from the Birthday Cheer Stamp Set onto the Dark Indigo strip using Versamark and heat set it with Antique Gold Embossing Powder.  I adhered the Dark Indigo layer to the gold layer using tape runner and the word die using Ranger Multi Medium Matte. A strip of fun foam was placed beneath the horizontal strip to attach it to the card. Using the banner from the Tag Sale: Quilted Die, I folded it so that two ends would show underneath the horizontal strips as in the sketch. I assembled it all to an A2 Top Folding Card Base made from Stamper's Select White Cardstock.  I added a few Pretty Pink Posh Metallic Gold 6mm Sequins to add the finishing touch.

Be sure to stop over at the Always Playing With Paper Blog and see all of the projects from the design team.  As always, there is some fantastic inspiration among my teammates.  We hope you'll be able to join is this week!

Words Have Power

I have a post today for the AAA Card Challenge with the theme of "Words Have Power".  This was perfect for me to do since I recently purchased a stamp with words so powerful that it needs little else to make a beautiful card.  I don't buy too many stamps in this style, but I loved this one and I hope there will be others that speak to me this strongly in the future.

Before I stamped the saying, I did a watercolor wash on my background panel (made from Canson Bristol Watercolor Paper) and let it dry.  I wanted to keep the look simple but elegant.  I used Distress Inks in Picked Raspberry, Abandoned Coral and Ripe Persimmon for the wash of color. I made a few cards in this style so I used several other Distress Inks in blue's and greens for all of my panels.

By the time I finished, my first panel was dry and ready to heat emboss with the saying. I stamped each panel with Versamark and heat set it using Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder. Once that was done I die cut the panels using the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle Die in the largest size to cut those panels.

I have lots of little Prima Flowers around from my Scrapbooking days and I have been trying to use a few of these with my cards. The small sized ones I used here are great for this kind of thing but I found that this was about the largest size I could use for a card front and in fact, used several even smaller ones on some of the cards I made.  I wanted the focus to be on the sentiment not on the decorations.

Encouragement or Thinking of You Cards are my favorites to make and send and I can't think of any that are more appreciated than that except maybe Thank You's. Sometimes a person gives you an ear, a hug or a word of praise or encouragement when you most need it and I don't want that person to think their kindness went unnoticed.  We all need words of affirmation that what we are doing makes a difference in people's lives.  I do it by making and sending cards. These particular words have great personal meaning for me.  They tell the story of the journey I've been on for the last two years that altered the entire course of my life.

I can't wait to see what everyone else makes for this challenge and to read their words that have power. Have a great day and thank you so much for stopping by today!