Mixed Media Distress Spray Stain Card

If there ever comes a time when I can't spend my Friday nights in my studio with my one true love (aka Distress products), I don't want to live on this earth anymore. 

 
This week, I had a chance to play with some of the latest stamps released by Visible Image.

When I saw the new Organics set, I knew I had to have it for my very own. When it comes to the perfect artsy stamps for mixed media backgrounds, this is it folks!

I stamped it on a white sheet of heavyweight cardstock and then I spritzed it with some Blueprint Sketch Distress Spray Stain. 

To messy things up just a little bit further, I used some picket fence Distress Spray stain and flicked it onto the card using the end of the open cap.

(Pro tip. You may want to tighten your cap all the way instead of just setting it gently back in the bottle and then tapping the whole thing with your elbow and then spending the next 10 minutes cleaning up stain from your table. Don't ask me how I know.) 

I used one of the eye handprints from the In Your Hands set, embossing it in black and fussy cutting and then added two circle cutouts, with a stamped sentiment from the same set to complete my look. 

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Love how this turned out, and it definitely wasn't too time intensive to make. I can see me using this design for graduation cards or when one of my friends might be going through a tough time. 

Thanks for joining me today! Pop up to the Visible Image Blog to check out some more inspiration.

Zodiac Birthday Card - Cancer Style

Friends. If you haven't been to Visible's blog yet, you are missing out. They just released an amazing array of new designs, and my heart is swooning at each of them! 

Among the newly released beauties is a whole set called "Written In the Stars" which has all of the signs of the zodiac and each of their attributes. 

I don't necessarily follow my stars or anything like that, but every once in awhile I have fun reading my horoscope. I'm a Cancer myself, and when I got my hands on the set, the attributes were pretty spot on "sensitive, caring, intuitive, sentimental, and emotional". 

Originally I thought about paper piecing my crab and pulled out a bunch of red patterned papers, but as I was pulling out my scraps, I came across this piece I'd made by sopping up the leftover inks on my craft mat after a project. (Waste not, want not.)

Since Cancer is a water element sign, the leftover paper totally spoke to me and I scrapped the scraps. 

Continuing with the water theme, I pulled out my Kuretake Gansai watercolors and added some various shades of red, with hints of blue.

I cut down the background, using mostly reds and orange hues. As I was chopping my paper to size, I spotted these old wax sealer things that I've never used and had a thought. I used my embossing tool to heat the wax, and pressed it into the background. 

I'm definitely going to use this technique again in the future because it resulted in "wet" spots, even though the wax is perfectly dry! 

I used some Weathered Wood Distress Ink and repeatedly stamped the Cancer phrase over and over again. 

Some additional stamping, fussy cutting, and blue fibers later and my card was complete! 

Head on over to the Visible Image shop to see all the new releases! Thanks for popping by!

Fusion is BACK! Special Guest Kevin Bray

People! This was supposed to publish yesterday, but in true Becca fashion I bumbled my scheduling. Woops! Oh well, it's always better to start the new year with a mistake right away, and then it's out of the way. 

So you get two cards today - make sure to check out my STAMPlorations post below. 

Over at Fusion, we are celebrating a 4th Anniversary! That's four whole years of creative challenges to inspire you. I hope you'll come party down with us! 

Here's the inspiration image and sketch! Over at Fusion, we don't like to limit your creativity so you can choose to use either the sketch OR the inspiration image, or do what I did and mash 'em together to create a true fusion!

When I first looked at this image, I immediately thought of a Winnie & Walter set that I purchased a year ago and haven't even used yet :o. It's a set for new homes and moving called This Awesome House and I LOVE it so it's such a shame that I've let it languish alone in a closet for so long. 

I incorporated the rustic colors and then also the keys, along with the calligraphy in the big ol' words. I also used the sketch (creatively). :) 

You definitely want to pop over to Fusion to see the cards everyone created. We all got to invite one special guestie to join us (which was ridiculously hard!) I thought long and hard about who to invite, and landed on a fella who lives about an hour-and-a-half south of me. Given the fact that there are practically zero cardmakers in this area, that in and of itself is a novelty. 

But the real reason I chose Kevin Bray to guest is because his cardmaking style is amazeballs. I found him first on his Instagram account and I've been so inspired about what that guy can do with clean and simple cards. We all know I'm TERRIBLE at CAS, but I'm always amazed by the design lines within his cards. Complete stunners. 

Pretty please give him a warm welcome and go comment on the incredible design he put together for this challenge. 

Funny Valentine's Day Card

You guys. It's January already. That means my annual goal of actually mailing out Christmas cards has waaaay passed and I've failed like usual and now there is only one hope for redemption: Valentine's Day. 

If you're no stranger to my blog, you'll already know that my love of all things heart-shaped, red, and glittery PAIRED with my love of all things punny make Valentine's cards the perfect outlet for my slightly twisted brain. 


Also - a whole new year means a whole new opportunity to rock the socks of the STAMPlorations Theme & Sketch challenge. Here's what we've got going on this month: 

I chose to work on with the sketch for my card and came up with a slightly snarky card. 

If you don't have any slightly silly, yet still kinda lovey dovey stamp sets in your collection, you NEED to go check out Funny Kinda Love. I promise you'll laugh and so will the recipients of your cards. 

I'm going to play along with Addicted to Stamps and More's Holiday challenge. 

I hope you'll come play along in the theme & sketch challenge this month because we've got some awesome prizes to give away! 

Rainbow Paintbrush Watercolor Card

Paint ALL the things!! I'm popping in with a quick post today to let you know I'm up on the STAMPlorations blog with a step-by-step for this card.

If you wanna know how to do stunning, easy-peasy watercolor that's actually semi-controllable, you're going to want to go check it out! Cheers!