Inspired By All The Little Things #48

I am a little slow this week getting things finished for all of the challenges I want to participate in but I need to get this particular show on the road as I only have a matter of hours left to participate over at the Inspired By All The Little Things Challenge Blog.

The image on the left reminds me of a setting sun in an evening sky with all the different colors. For my card, I used Distress Oxide Inks in Faded Jeans, Broken China, Wilted Violet, Fossilized Amber and Peeled Paint to create my evening sky background. The colors aren't as deep as in the picture, but I really like how it turned out. Truthfully, it is hard to get Distress Oxide to be as dark as one would want because there are only 12 colors so far and once you mist it with water or whatever solution, the oxidation starts which is what makes these inks blend so well.

Once I had the background panel finished, I used Hero Arts Unicorn White Spray to spritz on top of an acrylic block and then spattered it on to my card base for the starry sky using a Silver Black Velvet Brush in size 4. Since I was putting a Vellum panel over the top, I didn't get too excited about placement of the spatter and it was easy to do.



I stamped the vellum panel with a sentiment and the shooting star from WPLUS9's Lucky Stars Stamp Set. The sentiment is heat embossed in Hero Arts White Embossing Powder and the shooting star is done in Metallic Platinum Sparkle Embossing Powder from WOW!.  I cut a few stars from Silver Glitter Paper to accent and placed them around in a visual triangle, which also gave me a place to hide a bit of adhesive behind the vellum panel. I attached everything to a top folding card base made from Papertrey Ink's Aqua Mist Cardstock.  This was really quick to pull together and is a perfect card to send to one of your friends.

I hope you have a fantastic Friday everyone.  Thanks so much for stopping by to visit today.

Fusion Challenge - Lucky Days

Hi Everyone!  For this week's Fusion Challenge I wanted to keep the sentiment simple and to the point while really trying to do a combination of both the inspiration images.

For this card I wanted to incorporate the word "Lucky" to participate in this challenge and the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge as well.

When I see clover, it makes me think of all the lucky, four-leafed ones I have found over the years.  My mom has a knack for spotting them and I do as well.

I used Simon Says Stamp Lucky Ink with a Mini Ink Blending Tool all over a panel of watercolor paper.  I wanted to spray it with some Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist to really blend the colors and this works the best on watercolor paper.  I buy the large 11 x 14 pads and cut them down to make them pretty economical. I have several different ones around right now.  Arches Hot Pressed, Arches Cold Pressed, Canson XL Watercolor Paper, and Canson Bristol Watercolor Paper which for my purposes, is my favorite.  You can't overwork it or it will start to pill sooner than the others I have, but once you kind of know what you're doing and know how to control the water, it is the smoothest. Occasionally I want something with more texture and the other ones I have around work great for this.  One of the reasons I like the Canson Bristol is that it is whiter and brighter than regular watercolor paper.  I don't have to have stark white but I don't usually want off white. It works for some things but I'm glad I have a choice.

I happened to have just this one single piece of the star vellum in an A2 size and when I saw the inspiration photo, I thought of it right away.  So with the green and the stars, I had "Lucky Stars" which seems the perfect fusion to me.  The sentiment I used is from the WPLUS9 Design Studio Lucky Stars Stamp Set and it was perfect for this card.

I heat embossed the sentiment using WOW! Metallic Platinum Sparkle Embossing Powder. With the kind of pale silver stars, I thought it was perfect.  I attached the vellum using Ranger Multi Medium Matte.  You can see it in a few places, but I hope the recipient won't pay too much attention to it.  This is for my best friend, Gloria.  She loves green!

I'll be back soon with another project.  Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Lucky Stars

Over on the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog this week the theme is "Something New" showcasing WPLUS9 Design Studio products if you have any.  This gives me the opportunity to play with some standard favorites and a new stamp set I got recently that I haven't had time to play with called "Lucky Stars".

There is something to me that is magical about a night sky, especially at dusk.  I love it in the warmer months when it gets dark enough to see those first stars sprinkling the sky with their tiny beams of light.  If you don't live near a city, the stars are so incredibly bright in the night sky. When we travel up north to the family farm, that's one of the things I enjoy seeing most.  I also love to see shooting stars.  At home, we live about a half a mile outside of city limits, but still in a subdivision with lighting requirements, so it's not as dark as it is further away from town.

I started making my cards by ink blending a couple of background panels using Night of Navy and Blackberry Bliss SU! inks with a Ranger Mini Ink Blending Tool; one to stamp directly onto and the other to die cut a background.  Both background panels were sprayed with a solution of perfect pearls and left to dry while I figured out the rest of my design.

For the first card, I arranged my greeting and some of the decorative elements on my craft mat and then picked them up with my largest acrylic block which is approximately 4.25 x 6 inches.  I stamped them using Versamark and heat set it using Metallic Platinum Sparkle Embossing Powder from WOW!  The color of this embossing powder is a bit warmer than Silver and I love the sparkle it gives like the stars twinkling at night.  It was the perfect choice for these cards.  Next I die cut that panel with the WPLUS9 Scalloped Stitched Rectangle from the Sunshine Layers Designer Dies Set.  I had previously cut a Twist Cover Plate Die from some Eggplant card stock so I adhered that to the front of my top folding A2 sized Wisteria card base. Then I adhered the stamped, die cut panel on top to complete that card. I pretty much use the Scalloped Rectangle or the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles to die cut all of my card front panels.  They are basics that I use over and over.

For my other card, I die cut the panel with the WPLUS9 Starry Background Die. This die cut doesn't cut an outline, but it cuts different sized stars in your background panel. It's a smaller die so I just repositioned it and cut my background panel twice to get the full effect. Next I layered that over a piece of shimmery white card stock that had been treated with Tsukineko Sheer Shimmer Spritz.   I stamped the greeting and the shooting star using Versamark onto a piece of Eggplant Card Stock and heat set it using the WOW! Platinum Sparkle Embossing Powder and then cut the tag using the Love Showers Designer Dies. I love the tag in this die set and use it all the time for gift tags or other kinds of tags.  It's a fantastic size and big enough to hold a nice sized greeting being 3 inches wide and slightly taller than 4 inches.

I wanted my star shaped brad to match exactly, so using a pair of tweezers to hold it I ran it across my Versamark Ink Pad and then dipped it into the same Platinum Sparkle Embossing Powder and heat set it.  To make the moon, I cut a circle from a circle die and then cut a smaller circle lined up inside of it to make the shape of the crescent and went over it with my Wink of Stella Clear Shimmer Pen.  Both of my card stocks are very heavy and when I tried to cut the stitched rectangle it did not cut through both layers so I had to use my Tim Holtz Scissors to finish the cuts.  Then I assembled all of the pieces onto a top folding A2 Wisteria Card Base using Ranger Multi Medium Matte.  I set two large acrylic blocks on top while it dried for a couple of minutes.  These cards have pretty minimal layers which makes for easy mailing.

I hope you enjoy these cards that feature WPLUS9 Design Studio.  Thanks for stopping by and I'll be back with another WPLUS9 product in my next post.