Thursday 29 January 2015

The Challenge #23


I have been making cards for about two years now, and this blog has existed for more or less a year. And I start to feel like I'm finding my style. I do like to make all sorts of cards, but the ones I always end up feeling most happy about are the CAS ones. Well, I guess I have kind of made my own sort of CAS, I'm not very good with white space in the traditional meaning of "white". I like colourful backgrounds but cards that aren't too crowded, and mostly have only one focal point. Today's card is an example of the type of card I feel most comfortable with. 

This card was totally and utterly inspired by the colours and sketch over at The Challenge. The colour combo is one I wouldn't have picked myself, but that's why we have colour challenges, right? For me they are pretty much my only avenue to using anything beside purple and pink... For this challenge, I wanted to play with watercolours. I need to start buying watercolour paper in bulk, I go through loads of it. I'm also linking up at Addicted to Stamps and More where the theme is Clean And Simple and The Pink Elephant where Anything Goes.



I started by spritzing the watercolour paper with water, and inked a stamp from Gorgeous grunge in Daffodil Delight and Bermuda Bay and stamped all over the cardstock. I then spritzed some more water onto the cardstock to make the colours run. I then switched to a stamp with smaller spots from the same set and stamped in Real Red and Bermuda Bay. After another few spritzes of water I dried the cardstock with my heat tool. I die cut the "Happy" from Real Red card and stamped the "Birthday" in Real Red. Then I matted the card onto Real Red card and adhered to a white card. It was so much fun playing with the watercolour effect. Then I put the card away quickly before I started adding anything to it, I think it's finished as it is.

Card: Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm white card, Stampin' Up Real Red, Daler&Rowney 300 gsm Aquafine watercolour paper
Stamps: Stampin' Up Gorgeous Grunge, Paper Smooches Sentiment Sampler
Ink: Stampin' Up Bermuda Bay, Daffodil Delight, Real Red
Other: Stampin' Up Hello You dies

6 comments:

Tanja said...

love that background - thanks for joining us at ATSM this week

Sue said...

Amazing background! Thank you for sharing at ATSM :)

cm said...

Your journey into finding your style is certainly reflected in my own, and I too, am drawn to CAS more than anything else. It's taken quite a while (crafting/blogging for two years) to learn to 'love' white space, and to work with fewer images/products than I initially started out using. Your card is delightful: your colourful background is perfect for the eye-catching "happy"! Thank you for sharing in the ATSM gallery!
~c

Wei Wei said...

Your colourful background is amazing! very creative card. Thank you for sharing at ATSM.

Nance said...

Gorgeous watercolor card! Thanks for sharing it at The Pink Elephant Anything Goes Challenge!

Unknown said...

This card really is happy! :) Love it...