Melissa brought us a video on how to do Floral Impressionism

I used watercolor paper and did one layer of white embossing, then watercoloring, then another layer of embossing, and a bit of darker details with a marker.

In keeping with the impressionism theme, I created a watercolor frame. I die cut the frame from Rustic Cream and then added layers of color with water and finally embossed it with the woodgrain impression plate.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Danielle brought us a gold leafing challenge! She showed us lots of ways to use it. I chose to do some stenciling:

My idea started with a hexagon stencil I had in my stash (cut with a Cover Plate from acetate). I thought I would do something with bees.

After I did the painting – and realized that it bled gold under the stencil, and also bled a pink color around the gold – I decided to add die-cut flower to what was becoming a collage. I used Autumn Rose as it went well with the pink color that bled out from the leafing. I added some stamped stems and small flowers.

When it came to adding a sentiment, I liked the One-Liner “happy” die. I was going to add a sub-sentiment, but found I liked the card without.

As my post title infers – my original thought was to have one or more bees on the card, but it just didn’t work.

You may notice that I mentioned the gold leafing bled pink around the gold. Well that pink was also very much on the inside of the card. I will have to figure something out to cover it up..but I will worry about that later. Definitely a learning opportunity!

Thanks for taking a peek!

The next challenge during PTI Stamp-a-Faire is creating a starry night.

When I started, I had my doubts – it was not pretty! But I dried the panel and added more ink and more water and eventually I loved what happened!

The video that Amy did for the challenge showed how to create a silhouette scene with black paint, but I thought I could do the same thing with dies. The deer is done in smokey shadow just to give it a bit of contrast from the landscape.

The sentiment is silver embossed.

To finish off the sky, I added some Soft Stone teeny tiny stars (from the Notched Star Banner die) and some sequins (in silver and iridescent), and a little white moon.

Oh my gosh this card makes me happy!!

Thanks for taking a peek!

Today is Papertrey Ink’s Stamp-A-Faire 2016! It started 7am eastern time – so I’m a bit behind already, but we have until Tuesday to post projects. This year’s theme is The Masters – each challenge will be inspired by a famous artist.

The first challenge was a color challenge, and I, of course, picked the one based off Van Gogh:

Here is what I made:

I love Van Gogh’s landscape paintings because they have so many layers and the colors are so beautiful. I wanted to imitate the layers. The background is sponged with Aqua Mist. The abstract half-circle images are from the Ahoy set.

Though my inspiration came from the Van Gogh painting, this sure does make me think about Monet’s lily pads.

Thanks for taking a peek!

(Is it just me, or does this blog title sound like an Adele song??)

A few weeks ago Papertrey offered a free set called Art with Heart. It is the exclusive set for the upcoming Stamp-a-Faire. Tomorrow, I believe, the design team will be doing a blog hop showing off the set. I thought I would make a card too.

A very straight forward, CAS one-layer card. It took me forever to select colors, but I love what I picked.

There are 3 flower images that go together to make the bouquet (not counting the leaf image). One is the small centers, but the other two…I think I got them mixed up as to which should be the darker layer. Oh well, still pretty 🙂

Thanks for taking a peek!

I played along with today’s Make it Monday challenge: Spritzed Stamps at Papertrey.

Melissa shared a video showing how she spritzes her images before stamping and gets a beautiful result.

I used an oldie but goodie – Rosie Posie. I didn’t bother with masking, but after the rose dried and I stamped the leaf and used a paper towel to mop up the green from the rose petal; it wasn’t perfect, but for the technique, it worked fine. I did add a bit of splattering by squishing an ink pad to an acrylic block, spritzing it with water, and then using a paint brush to flick it off the edge of the block.

Thanks for taking a peek!