Happy Christmas, Everybody!

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Stamping and Coloring

A while back I was making swatches for some watercolors Valerie bought me, and I used a piece of watercolor paper to clean off my brush in between colors. When I was done, I looked over at the paper and thought, wow, that would make great backgrounds for a set of ATCs (Artist Trading Cards).

I stamped windmills on two of them. The other one was done with Distress Inks.

For this one I did the puppin in the pocket separately and popped it up with pop dots. I made the puppy to look like an on-line friend's dog and sent it on its way. I like how differently it looks just by cutting the background with the brush strokes going vertically.

Valerie keeps spoiling me with new dies she doesn't want to wrap for Christmas! Aren't these flowers so pretty?! I cut them with handmade paper I've held on for far too long. It even has metallic highlights.

Dawn bought me this sweet stamp I've wanting for a long time. Isn't she fabulous?! I colored her with Faber-Castell markers and then went over each color with colored pencils to kind of fill in the strokes. I need to practice coloring with my markers more. Actually, I need to practice more of everything.

A Little Watercoloring

It's December already!

Shortly after watching a couple of watercoloring videos on YouTube by The Fugal Crafter, Valerie surprised me with this adorable puppy stamp by Stampendous. It was after Midnight and I couldn't sleep, so I sat took out my Watercolor Confections by Prima and went to work.

The next day I made it into a card for my sister-in-law, who's been in the hospital for over a week now. It's pretty serious, so I didn't want to the sentiment to be the run of the mill get well thing. I was happy to rediscover this stamp for her.

I loved watercoloring this little guy so much, I stamped a few more with the intention of making more cards.

I roughed up the edges of the watercolor paper and popped it up with pop dots, easy-peasy. As you can see, it's a good-sized rubber stamp and takes up most of the  of the 6" x 4-3/4" card front. I like that because it doesn't need anything in the background except a piece of pretty paper. It's a great stand-alone image I feel I can make more than one of without taking hours to do it.