Baby Pink Card - Two Ways

I'm a card designer who likes to explore different styles. My favorite style by far is mixed media, followed closely by shabby chic because both seem to come naturally to me. It's like my brain thinks in layers. 

And while I admire clean and simple cards, the style is as elusive to me as liking exercise. I swear to goodness, I just LOOK at some white space and BAM! an inky thumbprint appears. 

So since there are a bevy of challenges I wanted to play along in this week, I decided to try my hand at creating both shabby chic AND clean and simple cards. 

My shabby chic card is inspired by the swath of pink flowers in the inspiration image at Inkspirational and the sketch challenge at Beccy's place. 

 

I wanted to create an uplifting card and I bought a brand new kit from Unity Stamp Company that's perfect for anyone worrying in this time of uncertainty. 

I'm in loooove with all the texture in this design and also with that big scrawly sentiment. 

My next card was inspired by three different challenges: STAMPlorations CAS card challenge's current theme is anything goes with the option of baby pink. I'm also using the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches. 

 

And there's a really cool technique challenge at the CAS Mixed Media Challenge that I've never tried before: gesso resist. 

I've done resist with a lot of things, but I've never tried it with gesso. 

I painted a stamp I had from the STAMPlorations Trendy Butterflies stamp set with a thin layer of gesso and then stamped it into the center of my paper. I apparently hadn't cleaned my stamp from the inking before and so it turned out a little gray - which I actually didn't hate. 

Gesso resist definitely isn't as foolproof as embossing resit. I found that I couldn't quite wipe away all of the color, but nonetheless it was pretty. 

I sponged it with some Distress Inks, splashed with a little bit of water, and then used some Pink Distress Oxide Spray Stain to add a little bit of darker splatter. I finished it with a simple sentiment.

It was a fun challenge to try such different styles! Which one do you like best?

Babies and Patterns!

Do you ever design a card and then think, I need to make 19 more just like it? Well that's exactly what happened to me with these adorable baby cards. 

I decided to take on the challenge from Sketch Saturday. Their linkup party has ended now because I procrastinated, but credit where credit is due! 

Little did I realize it had ONE BILLION layers to it. (ok, ok, I'm being dramatic, it's only 13... haha - ONLY 13). 

But it did give me the chance to flex my pattern mixing muscles. 

I'm linking the boy card up to the Alphabet Challenge B is for Boy Cards. 

Coincidentally, I have about 13 pregnant friends right now (ok, ok, I'm being dramatic but I do have at least 5 that I can think of off the top of my head). And the sad part about it is, most of my friends who are preggers are sharing about how they can't have their partners attend ultrasounds, or host the baby showers they were planning. It would be really tough and scary to be pregnant right now.

But the minute I laid eyes on the finished design, I squeeed with delight and then had to make up more. They're so happy and every time I stamped a little onesie (STAMPlorations Bee's Knees BabyBump set) it felt like "buying clothes". 

I liked it so much I made a girl one: 

And I made a gender-neutral one: 

This color scheme was inspired by the TGIF challenge:

I've been hoarding all these 6x6 coordinating paper packs, and these proved to be the easiest way to pair patterns. All in all, I made 12 different designs because I had so much fun! 

I'm also going to link this up to the STAMPlorations never-ending anything goes challenge. 

Thanks for popping by!