Sweet Friend's Milestone Birthday!

A very dear friend is celebrating a milestone birthday this week.  Several really good gal friends are getting together to celebrate her and take her to lunch.  I wanted to make her a special card, and since I seem to be loving my new Stampin' Up Beautiful You stamp set, and also seem to have another card idea floating around in my gray matter, I thought I'd see what I came up with.

I found a lovely piece of patterned paper from the Watercolor DCWV Stack that looks like a watercolored paper with gold foil embossing.  I decided to make a salt watercolored background incorporating the colors from this paper to use as the layer upon which I would stamp my dancing lady image.  Though I had only done one other card with watercolors and never used the salt technique, I decided to be brave and give it a go.

I wanted my stamped dancing lady to have pink arms and legs, so I started my watercoloring with pink where I planned to stamp my image.  I used blues in the sky area along with a bit of pink and orange to give the allusion of the beginning of a sunset, and I used greens and yellow at the bottom to represent grass and a carpet of yellow flowers.  

After my watercolor application was complete and while the paper was still fairly wet, I sprinkled a good amount of regular table salt onto my paper and let it set for about 10 minutes.  I then helped the drying process along with my embossing heat tool.  I brushed and rubbed off all the dried salt so the paper was once again smooth and salt-free.  With salt, my understanding is that the larger the salt crystals and varied their sizes, you achieve a more dramatic effect.  Since table salt is much finer and more uniform, it creates a more subtle effect, but I was pleased with how it turned out and excited to try something new.

Since my patterned paper was gold foil embossed, I stamped my dancing lady onto my watercolor background with Encore Gold Metallic ink.  I stamped the patterned paper as well with the dancing lady stamp and the umbrella from another image in the stamp set.  I then fussy-cut them to adhere over the top of the image already stamped on the watercolor background to give her a patterned dress and matching umbrella.

For my layout, I found a Sketch Layout #SC639 on SplitcoastStampers' April 5th Sketch Challenge that I thought I would use.  See below:

For my #6 top left, I added an umbrella for my stamped lady, and for the #6 lower right, I added a butterfly to my double fishtail flag sentiment.   Below is my finished card, that I think Sandy will really like for her birthday!

Ingredients:  Stampin' Up products:  Cardstock--Island Indigo, Watercolor Paper; Stamps: Beautiful You; Inks: Pool Party, Soft Sky, Pink Pirouette, Sweet SugarPlum, Calypso Coral, Daffodil Delight, Mint Macaron, Pear Pizzazz.  Other:  DCWV Watercolor Stack (gold foil pattern).  DCWV Foil Stack (Aqua).  Recollections:  Cardstock--Cool Breeze 5-Color Pack; Gold Metallic pearls.  Encore: Gold Metallic Ink pad.  Wink of Stella: Gold.  Martha Stewart 3-in-1 Petite Butterflies punch.  Papertrey Ink stamp: Tea for Two Additions (sentiment). Technique: Salted Watercolor Wash.  Size: 4-3/4" x 6".

Daughter's Birthday to Celebrate!

Sorry, I have been most remiss in my cardmaking and blogging for the last three months!  Several bouts of the flu, traveling a bit, and general busyness are the only excuses I can offer.  But, I did manage to get a card made for my daughter, Jackie's birthday.

 

Since Jackie is a big umbrella fan, boasting ownership of at least ten or more, and some with matching goulashes, a card with some sort of umbrella theme is sure to shout out, "THIS CARD MUST BE FOR JACKIE!"  With this in mind, I thought I would like to use my new stamp set by Stampin' Up, Beautiful You, incorporating more than one stamp into my image.  

 

I chose the dancing lady stamp and borrowed the umbrella from the strolling lady stamp.  I stamped with Versamark and white embossed the dancing lady onto a black cardstock background.  I, then, Versamark stamped and white embossed the image again onto my red, black, and white polka-dot paper and fussy-cut the dress out to layer over my black cardstock white embossed image.  I Versamark stamped and embossed her hat and hair onto another red and black muted pattern and overlayed that as well onto the black cardstock image.  Next, I Versamark stamped and white embossed the umbrella from the "walking umbrella lady" stamp and fussy-cut out just the umbrella, which I set aside to adhered onto the black background after my card layers were cut and adhered together.  My next step was to Versamark stamp and white emboss my chose sentiment underneath my lady image.  After cutting and adhering all my mats and layers, the final step was to adhere the umbrella, which I offset to the left leaving it to hang over onto the layer below (see image below).  I used a white gel pen to make my umbrella handle connecting it to her hand.  

Though I'm not sure I like this, I did color my lady's white embossed hair with shades of brown, using my Copic markers.  I did this because Jackie's hair is brown, but I'm not sure I would do that again.

 

The last step to complete Jackie's card was to compose a verse and create an interior design that compliments the card front. . .see the finished inside below.

 

Ingredients:  Stampin' Up products:  Cardstock:  Basic Black, Real Red, Whisper White.  Stamp set:  Beautiful You (Occasions 2017).  White Embossing Powder.  Taylored Expressions Summer Nights dsp.  My Mind's Eye Holly Jolly Winter Branches (hat).  EK punch: Victorian Corners.  Versamark Embossing Ink. Uni-ball Signo White Gel Pen.  Computer verse (odstemplik font).  Size: 4-3/4" x 6".