Spring has sprung

Hello friends. I hope you are well in these difficult times. This weekend I took two long forest walks. More people than normally are out walking, everybody greets each other friendly, but keeps a safe distance. I am so happy to have nature around the corner.

At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Spring Mood Board challenge. Don't miss the last project by our March guest designer Ann Chuang. 

 Design team member Macarena has made this gorgeous mood board for our inspiration!

The mood board inspired me to do a scrapbooking layout, using some springtime crocus photos from our old garden, where we had a lot of spring flowers. I used a Lost and Found patterned paper by Tim Holtz for the background, which has flower patterns and really gorgeous colors. 

The two colorful panels are from Tim's Motif cardstock, which has a pattern that resists ink. I love these papers and the gorgeous patterns.

I wanted to add a subtle texture to the background and used Translucent Grit-Paste together with the Gradient Dot stencil. Yesterday, I posted a Textured Tag where I used and compared four different Distress Pastes, if you want to see more paste examples.

When the paste was dry, I dry brushed a little white paint on the dots.

Here you can see the result better. I like the way the pattern shows through, but with the added texture from the white paint.

The butterflies were die cut from scrap pieces of paper using Tim's Scribbly Butterflies set. If you have pieces of paper which didn't turn out as planned, try using them for die cutting. The results are usually surprisingly wonderful.

The sentiments comes from Memory Box Springtime Typewriter Sentiments.

I also die cut the Simon Says Stamp Outline Clustered Leaves from glossy cardstock and inked with the same two shades of green used for the resist panels. Big Happy was die cut from Distress Cracked Leather Cardstock and then inked with an ombre effect.

You can see the leather effect better here.

I also used a stamp from the SSS Uplifting Thoughts set, which is such a great stamp set. The label for the journaling was stamped with the new Darkroom Door Lots of Labels set.

And another butterfly to bring spring and hopefully new times.

I hope you will join us this week in our Spring Mood Board challenge. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

As you may know, the Simon Says Stamp Store is accepting new orders, but have longer shipping times for the moment due to the coronavirus. With this in mind we have made the difficult decision to suspend the $50 voucher for this challenge.

We know that many people are staying safe at home and we would love it if you would continue to enter the challenges and have fun! We are all in this together!

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. We also have a new hashtag #SSSUnitedWeCraft

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

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