Thank-You Card for a Teacher

I hate to miss an Impression Obsession challenge, but wow, this one was hard for me. The challenge is School Spirit or School Colours. It's been a looong time since I went to school and have no clue about school colours.
What I did find was a great little paper pad (in my massive collection of 6x6 pads that I don't have a clue how to use). It is called "Off to School" by Fancy Pants. So then all I needed was something in my IO collection to use with it. I am so happy that I bought the 'Girl with Easter Basket' ) die (DIE260-I). This die is so sweet and can certainly be used for a lot more than Easter. I just trimmed up the die-cut to remove the basket and instead added an apple from another IO die (DIE203-A). I also used the IO All Occasions II stamp set for the sentiment. I think it might be suitable as a thank-you card for a teacher.

The Impression Obsession challenge can be found here:

http://mitrafriant.typepad.com/impression_obsession_news/2015/04/new-io-challenge-school-colors.html

Distress Ink and Daisies

Playing with water colour again! This time I used Distress inks to create a a floral background on watercolour paper. I wet the paper with a lot of water and stamped on it using stamps that had been inked with Distress inks. The first layer of stamping was very wet so the stamps created very vague images. When that layer dried some, I re-stamped everything again. This layer was more defined, and a third layer was even more defined. I love the look and the technique is fun to do.
I used a Cheery Lynn doily die to put a sentiment on, and I cut a butterfly with the Memory Box Kaleidoscope butterfly die which I glued on a piece of acetate. I coloured the back side of the butterfly with Sakura Glaze pens and sprinkled white glitter on while the ink was still wet.

I'm entering this in the Simon says Stamp- Make Your Own Background challenge.

Water Colour Hydrangea

I've been playing with different types of water colours and I just came across this gorgeous Stampendous Hydrangea stamp which I thought would be fun to paint. I used 140lb water colour paper and stamped the image with Distress ink in Weathered Wood. I mixed paint from the Kuretake paint set in a palette with enough water to thin it quite a lot. This paint is heavily pigmented and is opaque when used straight from the box. I wanted a more transparent look. I used wet on wet to paint the flowers and then pained the background using the same colours plus blue  in a very thinned down solution. I was going to add a sentiment, but I don't know what occasion I will use this for yet.

I really love this paint, you can get so many different looks with it.

I'm entering this in the Simon Says Stamp - Make Your Own Background challenge

Spotlight stamping

I came across a neat challenge to use up some stash on the Crafty Steals blog. The required elements were washi tape, a journaling card and a punch. I have lots of journaling cards, and I don't use them anymore because I haven't done scrapbooking in ages and I never seem to use washi tape. So I found a journaling card by Fancy Pants suitable for a birthday card and I made some candles by covering cardboard with washi tape. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to put it all together until I remembered a post by Jennifer McGuire using spotlight stamping. I used an EK Success punch to make the flames for my candles. The punch actually is to make leaves, but I thought the shape was great.

I also used a punch to make holes for the twine. The " Happy Birthday to You" stamps are from a JustRite set and the "make a wish" was already on the journaling card.
Here is a picture showing the punch and tapes.

This was a real change for me, but it was fun to use some different products.
The Crafty Steals challenge was called Third Thursday Stash Challenge, and I am going to make a note of it because it is a fun idea and I look forward to trying it again!