Thursday, September 4, 2014

Waterdrop Technique

It's a boy! My cousin gave birth to a beautiful baby boy tonight and right after work I set about making her a congratulatory card to celebrate the little peanut.









Do you ever have emotional relationships to stamps, or am I the only weird one? When I was 14, I saw this beautiful stamp in a crafting store and my grandma saw me staring longingly at it. She, being the amazingly generous person that she is, surprised me with it. I have TRIED over and over and over again to use this stinkin' stamp but I always wind up hating the end result because the stamp is so big. Which makes it the perfect entry for Simon Says Stamp's Boldly go into STAMPtember challenge!

I finally conquered the stamp! I saw this technique where people emboss resisted the background images, and I thought - hey! Why not try it with a sentiment? I embossed the saying using white embossing powder and brushed over it with a heavy coat of shades of blue Distress Inks. Next, I dropped large droplets of water on to the paper, and let it sit. 

It creates this gorgeous result that, I think, compliments the saying perfectly. 

After the droplets formed, I dabbed it with a paper towel and used my heat tool to dry it. In addition to the big stamp, I think this card is bold because I took on two somewhat dated crafting materials: vellum and mulberry paper. I remember using these things back in the day, but haven't seen them used very recently - especially not the mulberry paper. 

I positioned mulberry paper behind the stamped image and distressed the edges using Faded Jeans Distress Ink. To tackle the vellum, I busted out my Cricket Basic Shapes cutter and made some flowers. I used blue vellum, dabbed it in Faded Jeans and painted over it with Perfect Pearls Blue Patina before drying it with a heat tool. Boy were my hands messy!!



The flowers turned out with this grungy, textured, shimmery feel and I finished them with some blue embellishments. Finally, I used some tiny sequins sent to me by my friend, LaVon Hall

The finished card looks like the perfect thing to send to my cousin in honor of her little bundle of joy!

MATERIALS:
  • Distress Inks: Stormy Sky, Weathered Wood, Faded Jeans
  • Perfect Pearls: Blue Patina
  • River City Rubber Works, "Oh, but I Won't Know" stamp by Kay Foly
  • Cricut Basic Shapes cartridge
  • Blue embellishments
  • Dark blue and white cardstock\
  • Tiny sequins
  • Light blue vellum
  • White mulberry paper




6 comments:

  1. What an absolutely beautiful creation! I love, love, love all the color variations with your distress inks -- it creates such a dreamy result! Congrats on the new little bundle of joy in your family. I bet you'll be cuddling on that little guy in no time! ;-)

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  2. Ahhh...that little guy is so precious! The card is wonderful. Your new blog is fabulous as well. I love that you used the tiny sequins on the card. Those tiny sequins are a favorite of mine. They seem to add just the right to touch to so many cards. I had to do a bit of searching to find them after Simon Says Stamp put only a few in one of the card kits. If you like them they are Cartwright Moonshine 3mm cupped they have them at SSS when they are instock http://www.simonsaysstamp.com/product.aspx?id=116230 There are 1850 of them in the package!! I also just noticed that there is a assortment package with different sizes http://www.simonsaysstamp.com/product.aspx?id=304697 also out of stock right now. Hopefully they will soon be back in stock. If you need more until you can get your hands on them let me know I probably have a few hundred to spare. LOL

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  3. This is gorgeous! Wow the deep effect of the colour is so fantastic! And the sentiment is so great too!. Congrats to your sweet new family member!

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  4. Absolutely perfect way to use that wonderful stamp! This will surely be treasured by your cousin!

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  5. Such a lovely and beautiful card! The colors and sentiment are awesome. Thank you so much for sharing with us at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge. :)

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  6. Gorgeous sentiment. Love the colours

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