Favorite Color Combo Linky Party "Smile"

Hello and Happy Monday! 

Today is my first post as a design team member for Craftin Desert Divas (CDD)! I'm looking forward to working with this group of kind, talented ladies!

Every other Monday will mark the beginning of a new semi-weekly Linky Party over at the Craftin Desert Diva's blog. I hope you will play along with us and share your projects! Every Linky party will have a winner and a Top 3 so you have a chance to win a prize! The more times you join us, the better your chances! 

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Craftin Desert Divas

Too Cute by Jessica

The theme for this week is Favorite Color Combo and I think this is a fun theme! I had to choose between my favorite colors and I decided to make a fun, watercolor background with Distress Inks. Those who are familiar with Distress Inks know their favorite color combos so picking colors for my background was stress free!

Here is my project:

I used two adorable mini Stamp Sets for my card: Wish Upon A Star and Wanna Hug. 

To begin, I die cut a scalloped panel with watercolor cardstock from the die set, Fancy Frame Dies. I just have to say, I love the stitching on these dies and all of my stitched dies but this die set adds a little something different from the others. 

Next, I ran the panel through my Big Shot with a Darice embossing folder to make a fun, textured background. In order to make the dots from the embossing folder stand out more, I smushed the distress ink onto an acrylic block, spritzed it with a bit of water and ran it over the textured background to let the ink soak into the raised dots. Then I smushed the four different inks onto an acrylic block and picked up the color with a paint brush to blend color into the rest of the background. My new favorite Distress Inks to blend together for this type of background are Cracked Pistachio, Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean and Dusty Concord. 

For the sea creatures, I decided to stamp them on watercolor cardstock and color them with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers. There does seem to be a learning curve with these markers. They bleed into each other like crazy if you aren't careful. Even after they're dry, they can be reactivated with water. First hand experience taught me that even carefully brushing Wink of Stella over the dry ink on the hat on the left jelly blended the purple, blue and green together. To fix this, I drew white gel pen lines and dots on the hat. I had to leave my artistic control side at the door and just go with it this time. haha it also helps to use less markers. It's amazing the varied color you can achieve with just a couple of markers. Thankfully, I love the way they turned out.

When I was finished coloring the jellies and starfish, I decided to stamp some of the bubbles from the Wanna Hug stamp set. First with Stazon, then with Unicorn White from Hero Arts. I brushed Clear Wink of Stella inside each of the bubbles and then added Glossy Accents inside each of the bubbles and also little dots around the background.

For the sentiment, I wanted to use the Smile stamp from the stamp set, Simply Said. I needed to come up with a strip of paper to stamp it on so I decided it would be fun to use one of the banner stamps that comes in the stamp set, Short & Sweet Tags. I stamped the banner, fussy cut around the dash lines and stamped Smile with Tutti Fruity ink from Mama Elephant. 

The only thing left to do was adhere some sequins to enhance the feel of the underwater party! I used StarPower Sequins and Dream Catcher Sequins. Aren't they fun? I love the tiny stars! 

Thank you for visiting and have a beautiful day! 

Kristin 

Products Used:

Wanna Hug

Wish Upon A Star

Simply Said

Short & Sweet Tags

Fancy Frame Dies

Dream Catcher Sequins

StarPower Sequins