Art Stones and Glass Beads

Hello friends! I hope you had a fun weekend! The sun was shining here and we spent a lot of time outdoors, at a favorite playground, at the soccer field and on a beautiful forest walk.

It is the first Monday of a new month and that means that this week the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog team showcase a specific designer / company. This week it is Prima Marketing, with all their pretty products. You don't have to use Prima's products to join, but it is always fun if you do. Our theme is Floral Frenzy.

Since it is a new month, we also have a new guest designer. During February Christina, with her blog Rosso Papavero will share her gorgeous creations with us. I hope you will stop by her blog to see what she made for this week's challenge.

This week, I decided to make an Artist Trading Card, since it is such a fun, small surface to work on. The textured background was created with art stones and glass beads and is very easy to do, as you will see below. 

Start by cutting a piece of watercolor paper into an ATC size (2.5 x 3.5 in). Coat with gesso. Add some glass beads directly into the gesso and continue with Mini Art Stones. Let dry.

Add a layer of gesso on top of the art stones and beads. This prepares the card for the next step, and also acts as a glue.

When the gesso is dry, paint with Distress Paints. For a different look, pick other colors. Let dry.

Dry brush the background with a little metallic paint. It will catch on to the textured parts, and makes them more visible. This background would work great for a space theme too, or for something relating to the sea.

I also added three art pebbles, to look like bubbles. The mix of mini art stones and the glass beads makes for a very interesting background, which is really easy to do.

The flowers come from Prima's Moon Bay Golden Coast and were dry-brushed with a little metallic paint. I also added more crystal beads to the card.

The gloss medium used to add the clear beads hadn't dried completely when I took these photos. It is now completely clear. For the sentiment, I stamped the Finnabair 4 stamp on a piece of inked paper and added a Clippings Sticker on top.

The Art Pebbles work as a magnifying glass, making the art stones look bigger.

I hope you will join us this week in our Floral Frenzy challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.