Paper Recollections

Today's layout celebrates my daughter's spring orchestra concert and combines several of my favorite things - die cutting and stenciling.   To prepare the background page for the watercolor, I covered a piece of 12x12 white cardstock in clear gesso.  Next, I smooshed Evergreen Bough Distress Oxide Ink onto a piece of plastic packaging and used my Distress Sprayer to add water to the ink.  Using the "kissing technique", I "kissed" the packaging to the white background starting from the top left moving down to the bottom right of the background page.  I dried the background using a heat gun and repeated the process a few more times to darken the color.  I repeated this same process with Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide Ink. After the ink dried, I placed the Vicki Boutin heart stencil diagonally across the top right of the page.  I used blending brushes to diagonally stencil hearts using Abandoned Coral, Antique Linen, and Evergreen Bough Distress Oxi...

I am bringing you a third card made from the Dare 2B Artzy Seas the Day stamp set.  I am using the octopus image to create a sweet card to give to someone who needs a little extra TLC. I started out by stamping the octopus on Bristol smooth cardstock. I used my Brother Scan N Cut to cut out the image and then colored it with alcohol markers.  I used a white gel pen to make a few highlights on the octopus. For the background, I scribbled Picked Rasberry and Mermaid Lagoon Distress Crayons on a Bristol smooth cardstock panel.  I used a paintbrush dipped in water to blend out the colors.  After the panel was dry, I used purple tape to tape down a fractal diamond stencil on top of the panel.  I used a Stencil Pal to spread Vicki Boutin's Iridescent glaze over the panel. This allows the blue and pink from the card panel to show through while giving the card panel a beautiful shine.  I adhered the octopus to the card panel using liquid glue. There are so many gre...