Best Friends Watercolour Layout

Hi friends! I hope you are well and had a good weekend! I am sorry that it has been a little quiet here on the blog, I am working hard on an assignment for a course that I am taking. Almost done, the deadline is on Wednesday. Today, it is Monday and a new Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge is up. This week's theme is best friends.

When Christmas is over, I usually don't do any more Christmas themed crafting, but I really wanted to scrap this year's Christmas card photo of the boys. The background of the layout could work for other themes too, and it was made mainly with stamps and watercolours. I hope the boys will be best friends also when they are older, even though the age difference is quite big. On the back of the layout, I also wrote the story about taking this photo, which was one in a series of quite a few not-so-good photos. 

I wanted to use these Bird stamps from Prima, which come from a set with great bird stamps. They were stamped on Prima's 12 x 12 watercolour paper using Jet Black ink. I masked the birds when stamping the wood grain background, which was embossed with white powder. All the colouring on this page was done with watercolours, and I also painted a branch for the birds to sit on. 

After embossing the wood grain pattern, I painted the page with beige and brown, using the darker brown here and there to highlight the embossing. The page was embellished with Simon Says Stamp exclusive dies, such as the pretty Kinley snowflake, and 'snow'. They were die cut from white and dark grey paper, using the latter as a shadow to make them stand out better from the background. The clouds were stenciled with Snowflake Paste, it is a Simon Says Stamp stencil called Make a Scene, but I couldn't find it in the shop when I wanted to link it. 

The title was done with Label Letter stickers, and I also die cut two Sketch Trees, and another word. 'Let the wind carry you' comes from the Birds stamp set, and so does the pretty berry stamp. I also used the Scandinavian Holiday set by Hero Arts, particularly because of the straw goat - which you can also spot on the photo. Anton bought it for his room for his own money at a Christmas market and is very proud of it. You can spot some hearts stenciled with Snowflake Paste behind the cheese cloth. 

There are also stenciled hearts peaking up behind the photo, which was matted on the same grey Simon Says Stamp cardstock as the die cut embellishments. 

The stamped and die cut labels and tags comes from Sizzix Labels and Numbers set, and were stamped with Simon Says Stamp exclusive inks. 

I also used a Carousel Horse die cut to give a more playful feeling to the layout. It was die cut from two shades of grey paper.

Below the photo there are three stamped trains, painted with the watercolours.

I hope you will join us in our best friends challenge. As always you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp. You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

If you want to, follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

If you use instagram add #sssmchallenge to your challenge entry uploads, so that we can see them on there too.

Thank you so much for stopping by today!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

Simon Says Stamp KINLEY SNOWFLAKE	Simon Says Stamp WINTER SNOW	Simon Says Stamp SKETCH TREES	Simon Says Stamp BALLOONS AND PATTERNS	Sizzix Framelits LABELS AND NUMBERS
Prima Flowers BIRDS Bloom Cling Stamp	Prima Flowers FINE WOOD Cling Stamp	Prima Flowers DECEMBER 25 A Victorian Christmas	Hero Arts SCANDINAVIAN HOLIDAY BY LIA	Simon Says Stamp Dye Ink SLATE
Simon Says Stamp Dye Ink SMOKE	Simon Says Stamp Dye Ink SCHOOLHOUSE RED	Ranger Archival Ink Pad JET BLACK	Ranger Wendy Vecchi Archival TREE BRANCH	Sakura KOI WATERCOLORS SKETCH BOX
Simon Says Stamp EMBOSSING POWDER WHITE	Prima Flowers SNOWFLAKE PASTE Finnabair	Prima Flowers 12 X 12 WATERCOLOR PAPER PAD 847753	Ranger Inkssentials EUROPEAN HEAT IT CRAFT TOOL	Ranger Inkssentials US HEAT IT CRAFT TOOL
Neenah Classic Crest 80 LB SUPER SMOOTH SOLAR WHITE	Simon Says Stamp 3 SHADES OF GRAY	Simon Says Stamp Card Stock 100# SLATE	Sizzix MAGNETIC PLATFORM	Tim Holtz LABEL LETTERS
3M Scotch PINK ATG ADVANCED TAPE GLIDER 1/4	Ranger Inkssentials Non Stick CRAFT SHEET	Dina Wakley Ranger PALETTE KNIFE	Tim Holtz DISTRESS SPRAYER Ranger	Ranger Inkssentials GLOSSY ACCENTS
Sizzix BIG SHOT MACHINE Gray And White

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