Hello Baby Boy | ft. Clearly Besotted "Wild Thing"

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

While I have a bunch more cards lined up for my Floral Thoughts mini series, I thought I would take a little break and share a baby card I created using Clearly Besotted's Wild Thing stamp set.

This set is just too sweet for words, great sentiments and puny sayings, but what I love most are the adorable little critters. There are four animals in the set and each seems to have their own personality, which makes it great for any type of critter card you happen to be creating.

For this particular card, I chose to use the lion in blues for a baby boy.

To begin, I stamped the lion on Copic friendly paper using Memento Tuxedo Black ink. I then coloured him in with Copic markers and fussy cut him out.

For the background panel, I started by using embossing paste through a dot stencil and setting that aside to dry. I make my own embossing paste, and I'll have a post about that later, to get the colour I just add a touch of Distress reinker ink.

I used a leaf die to cut out two fronds from Bristol paper that I had sponged with Mowed Lawn Distress ink. And used the bird punch from Stampin' Up to punch the vellum leaves. The Hello die is from Lawn Fawn's scripty Hello.

Once everything was dry, I used Ranger Multi Medium Matte to place the different leaf pieces together and right down onto the panel. I used the same adhesive to adhere the Hello die cut. I popped the lion up on foam tape to make him stand out and to ensure that he stuck to all the different layers under him.

While it didn't pick up on the camera, I used glossy accents on his nose to make it shiny.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own.

This card is for:

Fusion Challenge: Something Blue

Floral Thoughts Mini Series 4 | ft. Clearly Besotted Merci Beaucoup

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

It's been a pretty not awesome week for me, May 30th would have been my Father's Birthday so that was a very difficult day. It's been just over a year since he passed away, everyone kept telling me things would get better after the first year. So imagine my surprise and extreme disappointment when that wasn't the case.

I wanted to create a card that expressed my love for him and the sadness that still hangs over us regarding his passing. I still think about him every day and every day my heart breaks.

To begin, I stamped the large rose from Clearly Besotted's "Merci Beaucoup" stamp set with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on Copic friendly paper, and then again on 2" post it tape to create a mask.

I masked the image off, and sponged Hickory Smoke Distress Ink around the the image fading out towards the right side.

Once that was completely dry, I prepped the panel using my powder tool, and pressed Versa Mark ink through the Simon Says Stamp "Falling Hearts" stencil and heat embossed the hearts using gold embossing powder.

I removed the mask and coloured the rose in with Copic markers, using two shades of green for the leaves and stem, 3 shades of red for the blossoms and two shades of warm grey for the shadowing.

The blossoms are covered with clear Wink of Stella to create a shine, but once again the camera fails to do justice to the amount of shimmer that pen gives. In real life it is incredibly sparkly.

Finally, I cut a 3/4" strip of vellum and used the same gold embossing powder to make the greeting. I was originally going to leave this card without a greeting, but the shadowing under the lower leaves got a little thicker than I liked; instead of scraping the card after all that work, I figured I'd cover it up. There really is always a way to fix a little problem.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own.

This card is for:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Mask It

Floral Thoughts Mini Series 3 | ft. Clearly Besotted "Fresh Flowers"

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

Today I have a couple new-to-me things going on in the card. An image I've never used before and a technique I am still learning and playing around with.

I have another "Thinking of You" card today, which I'm sure comes as no surprise. At the moment these are my favourite cards to create, perhaps because they are so versatile. This was also the first time I pulled out the bluebells image from Clearly Besotted (I assume they are bluebells. That's the way I see them.) I felt they would work perfectly for this week's Fusion Challenge.

Since learning the shadowing technique (I'll create a post about it later), I have been trying to incorporate it more and more into my colouring, especially with florals. I absolutely love single layer cards that look as though there are multiple layers.

To begin, I stamped the bluebell image from Clearly Besotted's Fresh Flowers stamp set on to Copic friendly paper using Memento Tuxedo Black ink.

I masked off the image and sponged Tumbled Glass Distress Ink through a damask stencil starting in the upper left corner and pulling the ink lightly down towards the bottom right.

I removed the mask and then coloured the image with Copic markers, because these flowers are smaller than many of the other images by Clearly Besotted, I only used two shades of blue and two shades of green for the flower.

I then used a W5 and went around the image where the shadows would lay if my light source were in the upper left corner of the panel. I used a very light hand for this, as the W5 marker is rather dark and I wanted to keep my shadows thin. I went over the shadow area again with the W3 marker, making the line just a touch thicker.

I covered the blossoms quite liberally with clear Wink of Stella, but once again my camera has failed to do justice to the amount of shine this pen gives off.

The greeting is also stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink, to ensure that I didn't have different shades across the panel.

I then mounted the panel on a piece of soft blue card stock and wrapped them with the twine.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own.

This card is for:

Fusion Card Challenge: Something Blue