Mix It Up Challenge Blog - Ink Smooshing

Hi friends - I hope this note finds you doing well. How's your weather? Ours has been hot, hot, hot...and humid! But Fall is just around the corner, BUT I'm not going to wish the days away!

At Mix It Up Challenge, we're playing with ink smooshing - I LOVE ink smooshing and although I'm not thrilled with this card, I do love how the cupcake turned out. 😀 I used Tim Holtz watercolor paper for the cupcake; the cupcake and stencil (background) are from Pretty Pink Posh. 

I started by stenciling the background, then stamped over the top with Simon Says Stamp's YOU background stamp in a gray ink. I die cut the main panel and popped up the border.

I used Simon Says Stamp's Pawsitively Saturated inks, it's tough to see but there is hot pink, and orange in the frosting. The flower is a light pink. The wrapper is done in purples. Once dry, I dripped on some water droplets and dried with a paper towel; I then stamped circles from Reverse Confetti's Poppies stamp set onto the wrapper (Reverse Confetti is no longer in business, but this is still one of my favorite stamp sets!) 

To finish it off, I made the card into a shaker with lots of little shaker bits inside!

Thanks for stopping by - I hope you are inspired to join us with either ink smooshing OR anything goes; we enjoy seeing your creations!

Mix It Up Challenge Blog - Inlaid Die Cutting

Hello friends - how are you doing?

We are back at the Mix It Up Challenge Blog (MIUCB) with another super fun challenge - inlaid die cutting, so many was you can do this! I love to send birthday cards or tags, but I leave them blank so the recipient can re-use them. This is no exception!

I created a watercolor smooshed birthday tag with various Distress Inks and a retired Reverse Confetti CELEBRATE die. Rather than the tag with the Reverse Confetti set, I used the largest tag die from the Hero Arts Nested Infinity Tags. I smooshed the inks on and dried with a heat gun, I then cut the word CELEBRATE from the tag, as well as, black cardstock, and a few layers of white cardstock. I inlaid the black CELEBRATE into the tag; I then adhered the white layers to the watercolor piece and adhered the stacked CELEBRATE to the tag slightly offset to the left and down; this way you can peek the black cardstock. I also splattered some black ink for a bit more texture.

I then stamped and colored, with Copic markers, some balloons and presents from MFT's XXX set. I added some white gel pen accents and adhered a blank tag to the back for a handwritten message. I failed to capture a photo of the back of the tag, but it has the Hero Arts sentiment 'Some things just get better with age and you are definitely one of them', I love this Hero Arts birthday sentiment set - so many great sentiments!

Hope you will join us at the MIUCB with an inlaid die cutting project, or ANY project. We always love 'anything goes' creations too!

Thanks for stopping by!

Love to Scrap - May (Anything Goes)

 Hi friends!

Before we even begin, lets take a look at that GORGEOUS new banner over on the Love to Scrap blog; did you see it? 😍 The amazing Donna created it and I think it's gorgeous!!

OK, back to business! 😀  As always, our challenge is ANYTHING GOES, won't you join us and share your creation?

I'm still sharing lots of Christmas cards; these two took some time with the die cutting, sponging, coloring of the birds and creating the backgrounds, but so worth it. 

I LOVE this little mini bird from Papertreyink. I've watched so many of Dawn Woleslagel's YouTube videos which always inspires me to try different things with watercolor. And the pine cones and branches from