Hi everyone and welcome to my blog! It's a new week and we woke up to snow. We haven't had snow for a while, so it is a welcome change since it brightens up the world.
This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Young At Heart theme. Since it is the first Monday of a new month, the team is showcasing a specific designer/company, and this week it is Simon Says Stamp Exclusive products. SSS has a great range of stamps, dies, ink, papers products and more, and new products are added frequently. You can find them all here.
Don't miss our guest designer this month, Nicola, with her blog Paper Profusion. Nicola makes gorgeous layered projects with lots of wonderful details. I am really looking forward to seeing the projects she will create during this month.
I made a Valentine's Day card, using a bunch of SSS stamps and dies, as well as Tim Holtz idea-ology products. The card started out with the Occasions Found Relatives image, and I had playing around with a watercolor distress technique for that image. The result is pretty cool, so I decided to record a little tutorial video of my process, which you will find below. There are also some step photos.
The watercolor distress technique started out with me having some left-over brown watercolor paint and I just happened to spot some Photobooth images on my desk and wanted to try something out with them.
I used Mixed Media cardstock for the background of the card and white embossed the SSS Drawn Heart background on the card front.
The card was inked with Distress Inks and then I misted droplets of water for extra texture.
I really like the handwritten 'love' from the Love set, from the Hey Love collection, and white embossed it on the Occasions Relatives card.
I didn't let the card dry quite enough before doing the white embossing, so some powder strayed, but I decided that, in this case, I liked that look, since it added texture. I also applied rub-ons to the card.
Here you can see one of the rub-ons.
For the sentiment, I used a piece of mixed media cardstock that was coloured with Antique Linen and Pumice Stone. Isn't this sentiment stamp great? It's from the Love & Quotes set. I wanted the sentiment to be a tag, so I used the Crop-a-Dile Angle Corner Chomper tool to cut the angles at the top. I love this tool and how easy it makes it to create tags in any size. The hole was punched with my Crop-a-Dile.
The background was stamped with a splatter stamp for even more texture. I rounded the corners with the original Corner Chomper, and stamped words from Love and All My Love here and there.
The Clipping Heart was die cut from shimmer cardstock.
These hearts also come from the Clipping Heart die and are die cut from shimmer cardstock.
The sentiment was stamped from All My Love and I used a rub-on to add the year. At the bottom of the card, you'll find a piece of design tape and a Valentine's ribbon.
Here's a look at some of the distressed Photobooth images I showed in the video.
Every distressed image will get a different look to it. I love techniques that have somewhat unpredictable results.
You can easily remove more watercolour paint from the image, if you think it is too distressed.
This image was done a little differently than the others (I didn't mention that in the video). I used Distress Micro Glaze on parts of the image, after sanding. If you let watercolour paint dry on the glaze, it gets the dotted look you see here.
This is the Found Relatives image, I distressed in the video. I like the mix of brown and dark grey paint.
The sanded and folded areas add so much texture to the distressed image.
I really hope you will join us in our Young At Heart challenge. As every week, 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.
Thank you so much for visiting today! Have a lovely week!
Happy crafting!
Anna-Karin
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