Happy Friday! Fri-yay! How was your week? Hope it was excellent! I've had a wonderful week with lots going on. Tuesday I was able to finally get to San Francisco to meet my sweet friend's new baby boy! (I got a cold the last time I was supposed to go, and didn't want to make him sick). We had a marvelous visit and he is cute as a button! It's been about a million years since I held a tiny baby. I loved it. I've been doing lots of stamping, reading and pondering also. There are three excellent books I've been studying and reading (CLICK HERE) and they are opening my mind to an entirely new way of thinking about being an artist and creative person. God is sending me exactly what I need, and it is magical. I'm feeling super positive and blessed right now. Lucky me. Grateful me.
Today I'm sharing the card I made for the Papertrey Ink Customer Blog Hop for this month! YAHOO. The inspiration image is GORGE. I was all on board right away. The hard part with this one is that I had TOO many ideas! One of my favorite stamp sets from PTI is called Graceful Greetings and I used that set with the chalkboard stamping technique. Then I accented my card with the (new to me) Branching Out die. Hope you likey.
Instead of using pure black paper, I went with the Smokey Shadow paper (also from PTI). I think it's just a shade lighter than black and that makes it look more like a chalkboard. And, it's just a bit softer. For my leaves, I die cut the image with watercolor paper and then used several shades of Tim Holtz Distress Inks and a water brush. (Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade and Ripe Persimmon) (now I'm hungry, LOL). Then, I layered my card with a small edge of bright yellow.
Here is the Inspiration Image for this month!
CLICK HERE to see Betsy's tutorial on Chalkboard technique.
After I stamped my main sentiment, I added a heart and some swirls from different stamp sets. I also used some dots too. The main images were all heat embossed with Versamark Ink and white embossing powder. I used my finger and added some very light smudges of white ink around the words to really look like chalk. I wanted to mimic the berries in the photo so I used a few right red enamel dots.
The Branching out die is very large, so after I inked it up, I ended up cutting two of them into pieces to layer around my focal point.
Check out the Papertrey Ink Blog to see all the other entries – and to enter your own creation! It's open to anyone and everyone and it's so fun to play along! Have a great weekend. XOXO
