Sunday, August 28, 2016

Thoughtful Branches Watercolor Card

Hey Peaches! I have a simple watercolor card for you today, using the Thoughtful Branches bundle only available for a limited time (available until August 31). This card was certainly a more simplistic card style for me, almost too simple for my comfort level, but I wanted to try something outside my comfort zone to really give myself a bit of a challenge. It's always great to try new things; often times you find something new that you love!

I started with some watercolor paper. I wanted to have a "resist" look from the leaves so that when I added color around them, they'd really pop. To accomplish this, I prepared my surface that I would be heat embossing with the Emboss Buddy. This cool little tool is a bag of anti-static powder that, when rubbed over your surface, will ensure that you don't get any embossing powder anywhere else but where you've stamped with Versamark. After I prepped my area, I stamped the leafy image onto the paper, added white embossing powder, tapped off the excess, and heat set it. Then I was ready to watercolor.
 I like to tape it down on all four sides to a board to keep the warping to a minimum. This is not a necessary step if you're just doing a small amount of watercoloring.

 I wanted there to be variation in the leave color as there is typically in nature, so I chose a few hues of green. The great thing about watercoloring is that even if you use different colors, the blend seamlessly. The only thing to be cautious of is that if you try to mix colors that are too different in hues, the watercolor can become muddy, so just be careful with how you choose to mix the colors.

The Stampin' Up! inks are great for watercoloring. You can use just a small amount of the ink refills and mix them with water or, in this case, you can take your ink pad, squeeze firmly on both the top and bottom of the closed ink pad to get the the ink from the pad to transfer to the lid. Don't worry! This will NOT ruin your pads. This will allow you to use your aqua pen or paintbrush and some water and voilà! You have your own pallet with no mess! So I just added a bit here and there of each color of ink and made sure that they all blended.

To get the trunk of the tree, I just used one of the trunks from one of the trees from this set, masked off the part I wanted, inked it up, and spritzed it with some water. I did this because I wanted to continue the watercolor look throughout the card. I did the same with the ground piece with Chocolate Chip ink and then just added some Tip Top Taupe ink to blend out the ground area. 

I wanted the the sentiment to stand out so I heat embossed it with the fabulous new copper embossing powder. I splattered a few dots of Basic Black ink by dipping my aqua pen in the ink and tapping it gently on my arm. To finish it off, I added just a strand of the burlap ribbon, and that's the card! Thanks so much for stopping by and as always, all supplies used for this card are listed below. The stamp bundle will be available staring September 1st. You can just click on the links below and they will take you directly to the product! Thanks and see you next post!

Check out my store:
Make sure you see my name in the upper right hand corner of the page or select "find a demonstrator", then "demonstrator directory" and search my name, Lauren Alarid. If you don't select me, I won't know who to thank for the order. Email me with any questions at Craftylittlepeach@gmail.com 
You can also check out my Pinterest Board:




Thoughtful Branches Watercolor Card

Hey Peaches! I have a simple watercolor card for you today, using the Thoughtful Branches bundle only available for a limited time (available until August 31). This card was certainly a more simplistic card style for me, almost too simple for my comfort level, but I wanted to try something outside my comfort zone to really give myself a bit of a challenge. It's always great to try new things; often times you find something new that you love!

I started with some watercolor paper. I wanted to have a "resist" look from the leaves so that when I added color around them, they'd really pop. To accomplish this, I prepared my surface that I would be heat embossing with the Emboss Buddy. This cool little tool is a bag of anti-static powder that, when rubbed over your surface, will ensure that you don't get any embossing powder anywhere else but where you've stamped with Versamark. After I prepped my area, I stamped the leafy image onto the paper, added white embossing powder, tapped off the excess, and heat set it. Then I was ready to watercolor.
 I like to tape it down on all four sides to a board to keep the warping to a minimum. This is not a necessary step if you're just doing a small amount of watercoloring.

 I wanted there to be variation in the leave color as there is typically in nature, so I chose a few hues of green. The great thing about watercoloring is that even if you use different colors, the blend seamlessly. The only thing to be cautious of is that if you try to mix colors that are too different in hues, the watercolor can become muddy, so just be careful with how you choose to mix the colors.

The Stampin' Up! inks are great for watercoloring. You can use just a small amount of the ink refills and mix them with water or, in this case, you can take your ink pad, squeeze firmly on both the top and bottom of the closed ink pad to get the the ink from the pad to transfer to the lid. Don't worry! This will NOT ruin your pads. This will allow you to use your aqua pen or paintbrush and some water and voilà! You have your own pallet with no mess! So I just added a bit here and there of each color of ink and made sure that they all blended.

To get the trunk of the tree, I just used one of the trunks from one of the trees from this set, masked off the part I wanted, inked it up, and spritzed it with some water. I did this because I wanted to continue the watercolor look throughout the card. I did the same with the ground piece with Chocolate Chip ink and then just added some Tip Top Taupe ink to blend out the ground area. 

I wanted the the sentiment to stand out so I heat embossed it with the fabulous new copper embossing powder. I splattered a few dots of Basic Black ink by dipping my aqua pen in the ink and tapping it gently on my arm. To finish it off, I added just a strand of the burlap ribbon, and that's the card! Thanks so much for stopping by and as always, all supplies used for this card are listed below. The stamp bundle will be available staring September 1st. You can just click on the links below and they will take you directly to the product! Thanks and see you next post!

Check out my store:
Make sure you see my name in the upper right hand corner of the page or select "find a demonstrator", then "demonstrator directory" and search my name, Lauren Alarid. If you don't select me, I won't know who to thank for the order. Email me with any questions at Craftylittlepeach@gmail.com 
You can also check out my Pinterest Board:




Sunday, August 21, 2016

Spooky Fun Halloween Shaker Card


Hey Peaches! It's starting to cool off a little bit here where I live; which is putting me in a ready-for-fall type mood. There are some really fun and beautiful stamps that will will be released from Stampin' Up on September 1st, so I thought I'd give you a sneak peak at some of the fall themed sets. The sets I used today are the Spooky Fun photopolymer bundle, featuring both the Spooky Fun stamps and coordinating dies, and the Ghoulish Grundge clear mount stamp set. I wanted to create a fun background, so I used he brick wall stamp and did a tone-on-tone background, using both Smokey Slate ink and cardstock. The great thing about these products is that they are designed to coordinate seamlessly together In this background you can see that it created fun, almost watermark, effect.


Then I wanted to create the shaker portion of my card. I cut out two banners, one from my brick stamped layer to allow for and in-lay to place the banners, and another (the same size) from one of the patterns from the fabulous foil designer acetate. At this time, I also stamped, in Basic Black ink, the spider web twice, rotating the stamp to make it face the last stamped web on vellum, and added clear embossing powder and heat set it. By the way, he black ink is fast drying so if you plan to heat emboss, you need to move quickly. Also, vellum is very delicate and can become very brittle if it gets too hot. I like to let my heat tool warm up a bit before using it on the vellum, and it will set quickly, so keep that in mind.


I arranged everything how I wanted it on my card before adhering any layers. I needed to create my well for the shaker next. I flipped over the top layer, with the banner cut from the center, and added my window sheet. after that, I started to line the backside of the front layer, around the banner, with foam adhesive strips. when making shaker cards, it's important to be sure that there are no gaps between the foam adhesive as the shaker contents can escape. 


After I had my well created and added my shaker contents, I added it to the top of my Smokey Slate layer. At this point I felt like it was missing something so I cut a strip of pattern paper from the adorable new Halloween Night Specialty Designer Series Paper (also available September 1st). I really love this paper! It has some truly stunning designs, perfect for those "Spooky Fun" projects. I also cut another larger banner out of Basic Black cardstock and added it as a border. I cut a spooky tree from some Basic Black cardstock with the coordination die set and a few matching banner strips, with my sentiment, and the last touch was to add some bakers twine. And that's my card for today!






Thanks for stopping by and as always, all supplies used for this card are listed below. The stamp bundle will be available staring September 1st. You can just click on the links below and they will take you directly to the product! Thanks and see you next post!

Check out my store:
Make sure you see my name in the upper right hand corner of the page or select "find a demonstrator", then "demonstrator directory" and search my name, Lauren Alarid. If you don't select me, I won't know who to thank for the order. Email me with any questions at Craftylittlepeach@gmail.com 
You can also check out my Pinterest Board:

#TGIFC336 Color Challenge

   Hey peaches and thanks for joining me for another fun TGIF challenge this week! If you're new to the  TGIF Challen ges , each Friday,...