Congrats, Thanks and Hello

Hello there! Thanks for stopping by today. Once again, I’ve made three cards. Here’s what happens when I sit down to create: I think I want to use one color scheme, but I’m not sure. So I grab some more colors to try. Or I do the same technique a few times, because history says I’m going to mess them up, and will need back up. Yet, lately, knock on wood, I’m actually getting multiple cards out of each session. Which makes me very happy. I’ve been sending lots of cards to friends lately, so I like to refresh my stash.

We are collaborating with Studio Katia this month at A Blog Named Hero. And because she has such amazing sparkly stuff, we made our challenge theme “Bling it Up”. It’s a match made in heaven. I am not naturally bling inclined, but with her sequins and jewels and beads, wow, it’s hard not to be converted. 🙂

Now on to my cards! For each card I used a distress stain and just made some simple, imperfect, blobs of color randomly on the watercolor paper. Once that dried I stamped the largest bloom from the Together We Bloom stamp set into the center of the colored area. I didn’t care that it wasn’t perfect, I wanted it to be organic in design, and I just love how they turned out. I used the champagne gold paint from the Finetec set to create some organized splatters in the white areas. I also used the same paint to paint some rectangles of watercolor paper that I would use to cut out the sentiment dies. Love how that turned out, and will certainly do that again.

I also cut the same sentiment from black fun foam and then adhered the gold piece atop the foam piece. On the inside of each card I used a coordinating sentiment from the Duo Talk stamp set. I love how versatile this set is, I know I’ll likely keep it on my desk to reach for all the time. I like the mix of styles and words, definitely a useful set.

And to make sure that I adhered to the challenge theme, I had to use some of these gorgeous Vintage Sheer Fusion Sequins. They’re simply a must have for me, a person who struggles with bling. I also added some seed beads to the top of the sequins, to cover the hole. Which makes me laugh, but also supremely happy.

And here are the other cards I made, which help to explain the title of this blog post. 🙂