Perfect Pearls watercolouring

I have several reasons to be excited today. My long awaited little Brazilian Rainbow Boa Baby finally arrived yesterday. He was going to be called Ziggy after a zig zag pattern on his tail, but my sister keeps calling him Gary, so that has stuck. So at least for now, he will be called Gary. After arriving in his new home, Gary quickly burrowed deep into the soil in his vivarium, and I haven't seen so much as a tail of him. This morning, I couldn't find him anywhere, and I was so worried that he had died during the night I made the Culinary Consultant go in and feel around to make sure he was still alive. Which I'm happy to announce he is. I can now see how this parenthood thing is highly stressful...

The other thing I'm very excited about is my upcoming term as a DT member on the new STAMPlorations CAS challenge. Today I'm flexing my CAS muscles, warming up for the first challenge starting on January 7th. I can't wait until then to get to tell you all about it. In the meantime, you can meet the DT for the challenge over on the STAMPlorations blog.

For today's card I might have gone a bit overboard CAS, I'm not sure if the card is more BAB (bare and boring) than CAS... But I love the colours on the gorgeous STAMPlorations French Marigold Large stamp that I used. I stamped the flower in black Memento ink and heat embossed in clear powder before colouring with Tim Holtz Distress markers. I was going to use some water to blend the colours, but my little watercolouring water container still had some left over water with loads of perfect pearls in it that I had used for another project, so I thought why not use the pearlescent water to do the watercolouring. This gave the flower and absolutely stunning shimmer. Then I simply stamped a sentiment from STAMPlorations Bloom Sketches and that was pretty much it. I like sentiments that are versatile, you could use this for a birthday, or a thank you card, or a general cheering up card.

I would like to link up with the following challenges:
Freshly Made Sketches - Sketch (see below)
Allsorts - Anything but Christmas
Crafty Friends - Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Just a pinch (in my case, of glitter)
Hiding in My Craft Room - Choose any challenge from 2015 (I chose #194, Think Spring)
Inkspirational - Bah Humbug! Anything But Christmas

Card: 300 gsm white card, 300 gsm watercolour card
Stamps: STAMPlorations French Marigold Large, Bloom Sketches
Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress markers Abandoned Coral, Aged Mahogany, Festive Berries, Fired Brick, Fossilized Amber, Mowed Lawn, Mustard Seed, Picked Raspberry, Ripe Persimmon, Spiced Marmalade, Squeezed Lemonade, Twisted Citron
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched rectangle dies, Ranger Perfect Pearls, Ranger ultra fine clear embossing powder