Watercolor Wednesday- Hydrangea Haven

Hello there! I'm here today with another Watercolor Wednesday. I wanted to play around a bit with the beautiful Hydrangea Haven stamp set before it retires. Plus, with all the white snow still outside my windows, I really, REALLY needed to play with some floral stamps this week. Hydrangeas are known for having a beautiful mix of colors on their flowers, and what better medium to accomplish this than watercolor. 

Measurements for this card:

• Card base- 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 scored at 4 1/4
• Basic Black panel- 5 1/4 x 4
• Basic White Panel outside- 5 1/8 x 3 7/8
• Sentiment Panel- 1 x 3
• Basic White Panel inside- 5 1/4 x 4

I hope you like this card. Watercolor is such a fun medium to work with, especially when you can just let the colors do what they want like you can on this set. You don't have to worry about each color being in just the right spot or staying in the lines. 

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Watercolor Wednesday-Blessings of Home

Hello there! This last weekend we had yet another snow storm here in Wisconsin, so I spent an afternoon sipping hot cocoa and doing some water coloring. 

I first stamped the large bouquet from the Blessings of Home stamp set with Gray Granite ink onto scrap paper twice before stamping onto our Fluid 100 Watercolor paper. This gave me a pale outline to guide me that would mostly disappear as I painted. 

My palette was an acrylic block with drops of re-inker on it. While I love our Water Painters, the details in this image really requires a tiny paintbrush. I also liked having a little more control over how much water was on the brush as I worked, so I used a round #2 brush. 

After spending so much time painting this image, I wanted to use it on something that could hang around on my desk all the time so I decided to cover a notepad with it. 

Apparently I like using this stamp set for notepads because I have another one here on the blog. If you're interested in the measurements for the cover and how to attach the pen, you can check out this post. 

However, on my previous notepad I really only decorated the outside of the cover. For this one I decided to cover the top of the notepad itself and add a little receipt pocket to the inside flap. 

I first stamped the large bouquet onto some scrap Night of Navy cardstock and then cut it down to size. The notepad topper is 3 x 5. I used a die from the Eden die set to cut one long edge and then just wrapped it around the top securing both ends with Tear & Tape. The pocket is 5 x 4 with one corner rounded. I used a bowl as a guide for the corner. I used more Tear & Tape to adhere the edges to the inside flap. 

To make the small flowers on the front, I put random swashes of Petal Pink and Blushing Bride on a scrap piece of Fluid 100 Watercolor paper and then cut them out with the Sentimental Park dies. A little shaping and a Champange Rhinestone in the center and they were the perfect little filler flowers. 

Have I mentioned before how much I love this set? It is so pretty, and makes such a grand statement on a project. Love, love, love! 

I hope you have enjoyed today's post. If you decide to place an order through my website, if your order is less than $150, please use the Host Code listed above (on the right), so I can send you an extra free goody. If your order is over $150 don't use the code as you get to pick out the goody yourself when you place your order. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Mail A Card Monday With Lovely Lattice

Hello there!

It's Mail A Card Monday, and it just so happens that I had cards to mail out to my awesome team members. It was just a little something to say Happy New Year to them. I decided I wanted to play with the beautiful new Lovely Lattice that you can get FREE right now with Sale-a-Bration. Isn't it a gorgeous set?

I really wanted to play around with this one and do some watercoloring, so I used watercolor paper. I started by embossing the image in gold which made the watercoloring much easier. I just kind of had to stay in the lines.

For the watercoloring I first got my "palettes" ready. I squished some ink onto the lid of my ink pad by firmly pressing the bottom and top of the pad together. I then placed a drop of reinker of the same color off to one side. This gave me basically two shades of the same color with the reinker drop being the darker. To do each flower, I started by spreading a layer of plain water over the entire flower with an Aqua Painter and then filled in with the lighter color of the flower. I then made sure a couple of petals were wet (sometimes I had to lean my head over to get a reflection from the window to make sure it was wet) and then I just touched the tip of my Aqua Painter in the reinker drop and then touched it to the base of the petals. As long as the petal was still wet, the reinker would spread out giving a nice gradient look. I did this all around the petal working a few petals at a time. The smaller flowers were done in one go. I actually made each of the cards with different colors so I could see how they looked, but I got so excited about mailing them out I forgot to take pictures until I'd already sealed three of them in their envelopes. :o( At least they will be a bit of a surprise to the recipients. The one was done with Flirty Flamingo, Calypso Coral, Daffodil Delight and Old Olive.

Have you seen the new Butterfly Beauty Thinlet dies. Oh my! So many butterflies! It has two large, absolutely amazing dies, but it also includes LOTS and LOTS of small and tiny butterflies. The tiny ones are the size of rhinestones and were the perfect accent to my bouquet. I cut them from gold foil paper to match the embossing and the gold foil strip along the side. To give my focal point a little extra "somthin' somthin' ", I rounded and punched each corner with our Detailed Trio Punch.

It was really hard to photograph this so you could see the shiny embossing.

What do you think? I hope you get a chance to put something in the mail soon to brighten someone's day. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Technique Tuesday-Acrylic Watercolor Background

Hello there! Welcome to Crafted In His Image. Life has been a crazy up and down the last couple of weeks, but I'm back with a simple and fun technique for you today.

Watercolor seems to be very popular right now, especially at Stampin' Up!, so I thought I'd share a fun technique that will give you a watercolor background in just a couple of steps. It is the perfect backdrop for your stamps.

I employed my 10 year old to help with the video this time. We may have had too much fun doing this. I think she enjoys my bloopers a little too much. :o) This was our 7th or 8th try with a whole lot of giggling going on in between. :o)

Please leave me a note and let me know what you think and whether there's something you are interested in learning.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PS. You can sign up for my April Tips, Tools and Technique class if you'd like to make this for yourself, along with 3 other fun projects. You can check out my Events page for more info.

Technique Tuesday-Watercolor Markers

Hello there, and welcome to my first episode of Technique Tuesday. I even tried doing my first ever video tutorial. The hardest part...figuring out how to get the camera in the right place so that it would see the project and not the top of my head-oh, and not saying "and" a bazillion times. ;o)

I thought I would start Technique Tuesday with a simple technique I learned as a new Stampin' Up! demonstrator several years ago called Watercolor Markers. Anyway, here's my little tutorial. Please comment and let me know what you think.

I realized too late that I should have either zoomed in so you could see the project better, or hold up the finished ones to the camera, but after all the work it took to upload this, I don't really want to re-do it. I'll have to remember that for next time. Here's a close-up photo of the technique done on the two different papers. The left is Whisper White cardstock, the right is watercolor paper.

And here's the finished card.

I mention in the tutorial that you can get the In Color markers for free till the end of this month (March 2014). You can check out all the details for that at the Paper Pumpkin website.

Here's a list of the products I used:
Whisper White Cardstock
Stampin' Write Markers
Aqua Painters
Watercolor Paper
Simply Sketched Stamp Set (You can earn this set for free by hostessing a workshop.)

Whew! I did it! Not sure if I will do a video tutorial every week as it took over an hour to upload this 4 minute video to youtube, but I will do my best to continue Technique Tuesday, it just may be in photos instead of video. :o)

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!