Today I am thrilled to be participating in an Instagram hop for my friend Jessica Frost-Ballas. She has more than 2,000 followers, and that’s a great milestone. Congratulations Jess!

If you happen to have come here on your own, be sure to check out Jessica’s instagram account, and her blog. I hear there’s a crafty package of stamps and dies from Concord & 9th to giveaway to blog readers. There will be a $35 Butterfly Reflections Ink gift certificate given away to someone who likes/comments on her instagram post and a $15 gift certificate to The Ton Stamps given away to someone who comments on one of the instagram hop posts. And there’s more, but I don’t want to give away all the secrets.

In case you don’t instagram, here’s the card I made to celebrate friendship. It’s funny, no matter what stage of life you’re in, you always have some friends to lean on, to help you through good times and bad, and just to chat with at 3am when you can’t sleep. So this is a card I hope to send to a friend that needs a little reminder of that.

This card was inspired by some wallpaper I saw recently. In the guest room bathrooms at the M Resort. It was so intriguing to me. I’m sure that it was just “stamped” by machine to get this texture, but I was determined to try to recreate it on a card.

Here are a few close-up shots for more details.

Background was simpler than it looks. I watercolored a piece of watercolor paper using the shimmery pearl paint from the watercolor palette. And then also dropped a few bits of the silver paint onto the watercolor paper. Once that dried I trimmed it into 3/8″ by 1 1/4″ strips.

To adhere to the background I used my ATG adhesive on just a bit of the strip, and pressed that down onto a piece of scrap cardstock. The reason it appears to be lifting is that I lifted it up a bit as I adhered down the other end. Didn’t curl it, or apply too much pressure, but just enough that it had some dimension. I adhered each row in a different direction, staggering alternate rows.

A few hours after I completed the card I realized that the wallpaper wasn’t staggered. Oops.

I let the dies decide on their own which pieces stayed and which pieces were discarded. I like the organic nature of that, especially on a flower and leaves. The top layer of the flower has some Wink of Stella applied, it’s just a bit hard to capture in the photographs.

Have you used Helmar Scrap Dots adhesive? I love this stuff. It’s liquid, comes in a tube, and is very thick. And will dry in whatever shape, or depth, you’ve applied it at, which you can better see in this picture.

Congratulations, Jess! Thank you so much for asking me to participate.

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