Sunshine on a Rainy Day Stamped Card

March in North Dakota usually means blustery snow and cold. But this week, right before we got walloped by a blizzard, there was a thunderstorm and tons of rain! Mother nature acted a little bipolar. 

In honor of our rainstorm, I busted out the Sparkle in the Rain stamp set by Visible Image and let my inner optimist shine with this card design.

I began by embossing the umbrella girl in black and then scribbled over her with shades of yellow gelatos. 

I blended the gelatos with my fingers and then used a damp paper towel to wipe off the excess gelato from the embossed image. 

I masked over my image and most of the yellow portions of my card and then stamped some raindrops using blue Distress Inks. 

I thought the card paired perfectly with this big ol' happy sentiment from the Express Yourself set. 

I embossed it on black paper and then painted in the sunshine with a bit of yellow Distress Oxides, followed by a healthy does of Spectrum Noir sparkle markers - because who doesn't love all things GLITTER!?

A little background of patterned paper and viola! My design was complete!

I'm going to play along in a few challenges: 
Just Add Ink - Just Add Water
Aud Sentiments - Anything Goes plus a sentiment
TIME OUT Challenges - Bold (I used lots of bold colors)

Thanks for popping by, my friends and be sure to head over to the Visible Image blog to check out some awesome inspiration!
 

Shine Bright

Hello Friendly Friends!
Let's talk about glitter. Basically, it's my favorite thing in the world, and my least favorite thing all in one. There is nothing that makes a card sing more than some open sprinkles of shimmer... but it gets EVERYWHERE.

I am fairly certain my vacuum cleaner is the sparkliest and fanciest sucking machine around.

I started my design with some black cardstock and nice layer of Fossilized Amber Distress Oxides. I spritzed it with a little bit o' water to create some dimension.

Next, I used some gold texture paste through the Strobes stencil and then pressed some loose glitter into it.

I used my heat tool gun to make the texture paste dry. I also love the way it makes the paste crack and bubble.

I stamped and embossed a lightbulb from the Shining Bright stamp set on a piece of heavyweight vellum.

 

I love how inspirational this set is! 

I cut out the lightbulb and applied a thin layer of glue to the back, then busted out the glitter for real, pressing it into the glue. 

I put all the pieces together, along with a sentiment from the same Shining Bright stamp set.

This card really shines in the sunlight! I can't wait to give it to someone! 

Thanks for popping by!

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. 

Add caption

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!