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Peach & Green Color Hues Challenge

I was very excited to be the Winner of the Navy & Cream Color Hues Challenge – you can check out that card here. My prize is to be Guest Designer for this challenge, yay!

I ended up creating two cards with peach and green colours, I was having fun with my new (to me) Altenew Watercolor 36 pan set – they are so nice to paint with!

Floral Garden Birthday

I die cut the Hero Arts Flower Garden from watercolour paper and leaving it all together, painted directly onto the entire panel. I found this easier to paint the delicate piece.

I cut two more from Bristol Smooth cardstock to stack behind for dimension.

I did a gentle watercolour wash on another piece of cardstock using Distress Ink Shabby Shutters, a really gentle green. I used a wide paintbrush and painted water over the panel first. I smooshed the ink onto my work surface and picked up colour with my brush, and swept it back and forth across the panel, aiming for a pretty ombre effect. Once dried, I then used the Simon Says Stamp Detail Bohemian Plate to add a little interest – the dot details kind of matched the floral shapes of the die cut.

I cut the larger heart from the Simon Says Stamp Heart Duet set (sadly discontinued, but any heart die would work), and stamped the birthday sentiment and a tiny heart towards the bottom, and a stacked Hero Arts ‘happy’ die cut on top. I finished the flower garden with some dark peach gems and gold Liquid Pearls.

Flower Fields Birthday

I have been using this Flower Fields background stamp in a number of projects lately, and decided to paint it with the peach and green colour way. I stamped the image with Antique Linen Distress Oxide for the ‘no line’ look.

I used the Altenew watercolours to paint this too, using the exact same colours as the above card. This time, I was going for a more subtle look – subtle takes practice!

I used the Honey Bee Stamps Birthday die – this little set comes with the birthday die itself, the shadow die and a further shadow die with extra piercing. There’s a matching sentiment set, and I’ll link to that below too.

I used the plain shadow die to cut the floral panel just below the centre and popped the pieces up with double sided foam onto Gina K Grass Green cardstock. I stacked the birthday die cut with gold in the space between.

I felt the white card base was too stark, so I added a lighter green mat in Jellybean Green. I finished the card with a sentiment from Simon Says Stamp Tiny Words Birthday and a few Peridot gems from Studio Katia.

I have recently discovered a new black ink pad – a friend was visiting and introduced me to the Versafine Clair Nocturne ink pad, an incredibly dark, crisp black. My new favourite for sentiments! Especially those hard to stamp solid lettering sentiments, wow, what a difference! It is a pigment ink, so not suitable for Copic colouring, but you can use it for watercolour.

This completes my pair of cards as Guest Designer for the Color Hues Color Challenge today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I used. Some are affiliate links (not all), which simply means I may get a small commission when you shop, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support.

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For more in-depth information about the best value supplies for your craft table, from cardstock to the handiest tools, check out my Best of the Basics series.

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Red & Pink Color Hues Color Challenge

Red and pink! Not a pair of colours I would immediately think to pair together, but that’s all part of the challenge I guess!

I know February is usually the month of Valentine themed cards – hearts and flowers easily lend themselves to red and pink tones, but I thought I would challenge myself even further by choosing not to follow those themes. Plus, I am still in need of a bunch of birthday cards as my boxes are critically low.

I also want to quickly congratulate my friend Julie – she won the Red & Grey Color Challenge and is a guest designer for this one! You can see her brilliant Red and Pink card here.

OK. So, I thought balloons would work! I used the Neat & Tangled balloon stencil which is unfortunately discontinued. (I have linked to another balloon stencil below which is similar). I used Distress Inks in Picked Raspberry and Festive Berries and inked up a BUNCH of balloons to pretty much cover my card piece. I ruled lines from some of the balloons down to the bottom as balloon strings with a white gel pen.

I cut the panel with a My Favorite Things stitched rectangle die, and also sprayed it with a bit, well, a lot, of gold shimmer spray.

I stamped and coloured a little girl from the My Favorite Things Birthday Besties set – giving her a pink and red outfit, coloured with Copic Markers. I also added a little shimmer pen and glaze to her shoes and her own balloon for shine.

I cut the image out using the matching die, and I also cut two more from scrap cardstock and stacked them together for a little dimension – this actually turned out to be faster to do than finding foam tape!

The sentiment is from the same stamp set, which I white heat embossed onto a strip of black cardstock to stretch across the card front. The card base itself is Gina K Designs Bubblegum Pink – keeping it in theme too!

This completes my Color Hues Color Challenge today! I have links below to some of the products I have used, some are affiliate links (not all), which simply means I may get a small commission when you shop at no extra cost to you. Thank you for visiting my blog today, I hope you join in with the challenge too!

This completes my card today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.

For more in-depth information about the best value supplies for your craft table, from cardstock to the handiest tools, check out my Best of the Basics series.

Follow me on my social media channels:

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MFT Sketch Challenge – 523

Happiest of Birthdays

I think I have managed to sneak this card into this week’s My Favorite Things Sketch Challenge at almost the very last minute! I have been working some other cards using this particular stamp set this past week, and I decided to use it again while it was on my table to create this card.

I stamped the Flowers in Bloom on watercolour cardstock and had fun painting them using Nuvo Shimmer Powders.

The colours I used are Cherry Bomb, Violet Brocade, Blue Blitz, Atlantis Burst. I squeezed a little powder into a watercolour palette pan, and picked up the colour with a wet paintbrush. A very easy way to watercolour!

I spritzed the panel with a little shimmer spray and some white gouache splatter.

The Sketch Challenge was set out with four panels to the bottom right of the card and a sentiment strip. Rather than colour four different images, I cut my panel into four – carefully removing a strip from the vertical centre and then horizontally on each of the resulting panels – all the while ensuring the image was not distorted. Many pencil marks and ruled lines on the back of this!

I die cut a further stitched rectangle to mount the pieces back together with foam tape for a little bit of gentle dimension.

The card base itself is Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock – it is a warm creamy colour and I find it matches very well in tone with the watercolour cardstock I use. You can also use Tim Holtz watercolour paper which is a much brighter white which matches with Neenah cardstock much better.

I felt the card base itself needed a little lift, so I white heat embossed a large background stamp, Flower Fields.

This gives the card a little interest without detracting from the focal image.

I heat embossed a sentiment, using Happiest of Birthdays from the More Essential Sentiments set and placed the strip towards the bottom right. A few wee Studio Katia pearls finishes off this pretty card.

You can enter this week’s Sketch Challenge too – click here to visit the My Favorite Things blog with all the details.

If you’ve never shopped directly with MFT before, you can click here to get $10 USD off your first purchase!

This completes my pretty card today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.

For more in-depth information about the best value supplies for your craft table, from cardstock to the handiest tools, check out my Best of the Basics series.

Follow me on my social media channels:

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Cute Hedgehog Gift Tag

You can find more of my Christmas Gift Tags from over the years by checking out #inkyandstampytags on Instagram, or my dedicated Pinterest board

Last year I made many many gift tags – and as a result, I have a box full of little projects that never came to fruition. This is one of those. I had stamped and cut the hedgehogs using Copic X-Press It cardstock, and coloured the hats, but that’s as far as I got :/

Inspiration hit finally! I decided to go with a Kraft and rich red colour scheme. I used scraps I had in my craft room from my local stationery store, but Gina K or Lawn Fawn cardstocks would be comparable and I have linked to those at the end of this post.

I chose the MFT Treat Tag because the hedgehog is quite a large image. I wanted to frame him somehow, and decided on the delicate frame in the Concord & 9th Just Because die set.

To get the gold heat embossed background in the right place, I created a mask tag out of scrap cardstock by cutting the frame out where I wanted it placed. I used my little MISTI to stamp and heat emboss the MFT background stamp, Christmas Words.

I completed colouring the hedgehog images – copics used are:

  • Red: R59, R29, R27, R24
  • Green: G28, G09, G05, G14
  • Grey: W9, W7, W5, W3, W0
  • Skin: E21, E00, E000

To feature him in the frame, I carefully fussy cut out the stocking up to his fist, and trimmed the bottom of the stamped image off. It now sits flush directly on the bottom of the red frame.

Before adhering the framed hedgehog to the tag, I added fluff to the hat with Tsukeniko Radiant Neon Amplify in White – a very effective puffy paint! This stuff puffs up tremendously when heated with the heat gun and STAYS white, giving a lot of dimension.

I glued the frame to the tag, where it fits over the gold heat embossing perfectly

For the finishing ribbon, I added a wide red ribbon found at my local emporium store. It has No Peeking printed on it, and I thought the tone suited the cute image. I used gold ornament cord to secure the wide ribbon, and tied it in a bow.

Finally, the To and From is stamped at the bottom in black, and this stamp is from the Scrapbook.com Gifting and Tag Sentiments – there are three other To & From stamps to use on other gift tags too, plus some other fun sentiments designed for gift tags.

This completes my little gift tag today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.

https://linkdeli.com/widget.js?id=f5e8378456858c916708

You can find more of my Christmas Gift Tags from over the years by checking out #inkyandstampytags on Instagram, or my dedicated Pinterest board

For more in-depth information about the best value supplies for your craft table, from cardstock to the handiest tools, check out my Best of the Basics series.