Happy Place Journal Page

Hello friends! I hope you are well! The sun is shining and we have a new challenge for you at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog. Our theme this week is Let's Art Journal.

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

If you have never done art journaling before, I hope you will try it out. It is a lot of fun and there are so many options! Don't miss the project by our August guest designer Ann Chuang.

I made a page in my Dylusions Small Creative Journal, a mixed media background with texture paste and Distress Paint, stamped and watercolored flowers and some bits and pieces I found on my desk.

Start by applying texture paste through Tim Holtz Focus stencil. When dry, paint with Distress Paint and mist with water. Let dry.

Stamp here and there with Simon Says Stamp Old Letter.

Add Stickles glitter glue to the stenciled area, using your finger. 

Stamp Tim Holtz French Garden flowers on watercolor paper.

Paint with watercolors. Drop in darker shades before the first layer dries completely.

Die cut with Simon Says Stamp coordinating French Garden dies.

I also die cut Simon Says Stamp Stitching Butterflies from paper that had already been painted. 

Add a few postage stickers from Tim Holtz Postmarked and numbers from his Clippings Stickers.

Don't worry about perfection when watercoloring.

I also added Tim's Design Tape Trims and sentiment stickers.

I found some strips of Tim Holtz Backdrops papers on my desk and added them to the page, together with Design Tape.

Don't miss the Kid's Summer Vacation Challenge, which goes on until 29 August. There are three great surprise parcels to be won! For kids 2-16 years. Read more here.

Join us this week in our Let's Art Journal challenge! You have a chance to win a $25 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

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

Thank you so much for visiting 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.

Birthday Cottage Card

Hello friends! This week we would like you to join us for the Monday Challenge's 15th Birthday Celebrations!

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

Can you believe that the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge has been going for 15 years! We would like to say a huge thank you to all of our fellow crafters who have joined us over the years and we hope you will continue to join us. So many years of creativity and inspiration! And about 760 challenges, if I calculated correctly.

Our theme this week is of course Happy Birthday. Since it is the first Monday of a new month, the team is showcasing products by a specific company/designer and this week it is AALL & Create. You can find all their stunning products here. You don't have to use AALL & Create products to join in the challenge, but it is fun if you do.

We also have a new guest designer and during August Ann Chuang will be joining us. Remember to check her blog to see what she has created.

I made a tall birthday card and created a scene with AALL & Create Tudor Cottage set. It was painted with watercolor paint adding stamped sentiments and sentiment strips. 

The AALL & Create Tudor Cottage is such a fun stamp set and you can create many different houses and scenes with it. I stamped a tall house, a lamp post, some animals and some pebbles.

I started by painting the house with various watercolors.

Paint the sky and then paint the ground. The dark paint is Daniel Smith Lunar Black, which is a granulating paint, adding texture.

Add highlights with a white gel pen and details and shading with a black pen.

Here you can see the granulating effect for the Lunar Black paint. The watercolor panel was mounted on Slate, Cotton Candy and folded Cornflower Simon Says Stamp cardstock.

The stamp set contains fun little details such as the directional arrows.

Don't worry about perfection when painting. Add shading before the first layer of paint is completely dry, so that the colors will blend.

This stamp set would be fun for a Christmas house too, just change the colors and add some snow. The sentiment strips come from AALL & Create Mindful Moments.

Join us this week in our Happy Birthday challenge! You have a chance to win a $25 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

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

Thank you so much for visiting 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.

Simon Says Stamp Happy Camper Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to my blog! I am so happy to take part in the Simon Says Stamp Blog Hop to celebrate the new Happy Camper release. If you are following along in the hop, you should have come here from the wonderful Barb Engler.

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

The Happy Camper release is full of a great variety of new and versatile stamps, embossing folders, stencils, dies, ink and sequins. You can find the entire Happy Camper release here.

The not-yet-released Simon Says Stamp exclusive Sunflower Dance 3x4 stamp set is automatically added to your cart that contains any purchase of Happy Camper products! This gift with purchase will expire 8/3 at 11:59 pm EDT or while supplies last.

I made a tag for this blog hop, using the Simon Says Stamp Confetti Butterflies 3-D embossing folder. I like anything with butterflies and this is a gorgeous folder. There are also coordinating dies, but I didn't use them here. The tag was colored with watercolors and the sentiments come from the Simon Says Stamp LOL set, also from the Happy Camper release. 

Mist a tag cut from watercolor paper with water and then emboss in the Confetti Butterflies folder.

Paint the background with Daniel Smith Amazonite Genuine and Lunar Black, letting them blend into each other.

The butterflies were painted with Daniel Smith Quinacridone Gold. I mixed two shades, one with more and one with less water. Start with the former and then drop the darker shade into the center of the butterfly. I also dropped a little Lunar Black into the center.

Continue until you have painted all the butterflies. Let dry.

Use Lunar Black to add a little bit of shading to the butterflies.

Ink the edges with Distress Ink Scorched Timber. 

Apply Ranger Moon Dust Stickles to the butterflies.

Color the embossed dots with a white gel pen.

Splatter Winsor & Newton Permanent White Gouache on the background.

Stamp the sentiments using Simon Says Stamp LOL with Pawsitively Saturated Sherbet ink.

Add Simon Says Stamp Pawsitively Dazzling Prism Gems here and there.

I covered the non-embossed part at the top of the tag with Tim Holtz Design Tape Trims.

The glitter and white splatters makes it look like the butterflies are sparkling.

Daniel Smith Lunar Black is a heavily granulating watercolor paint, which you can see on the texture in the center of the butterfly.

I added pompom ribbon and lace trim at the bottom of the tag, to hide the part that wasn't dry embossed.

You can use this coloring technique with lots of embossing folders.

Don't miss all the inspiration along the hop! There are of course prizes to be won too, and at each stop on the hop SSS is giving away a $25 coupon, randomly drawn from those who leave a comment. The winners will be posted post on the Simon Says Stamp store blog on 6 August.

Your next stop on the hop is my friend Karin Åkesdotter. Don't miss to the stunning project she has created. If you get lost along the way, here are all the stops:

Simon Says Stamp Blog

Nina-Marie Trapani

Suzy Plantamura

Cathy Zielske

Laura Bassen

Debby Hughes

Lisa Addesa

Emily Midgett

Heather Ruwe

Sandi MacIver

Tina Smith

Hanh Nguyen

Barb Engler

Anna-Karin Evaldsson (you are here)

Karin Åkesdotter

Rosemary Dennis

For more inspiration, remember to check out the Happy Camper gallery at Simon Says Stamp, and if you make something with products from the range, it is fun if you post it in the galleries too. There are galleries for all releases, and for the card kits, full of inspiration.

This is the second Happy Camper blog hop, don't miss blog hop number day number 1, which was yesterday.

Thank you so much for stopping by here today! 

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.

Kid's Summer Vacation Challenge

Welcome to another of our annual Simon Says Stamp Kid's Summer Vacation Challenge where we host a special challenge dedicated to our young designers.

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

The theme is Anything Goes

It is time for all you crafters to let your children loose in your crafty corners for a few hours. Adults are allowed to help just a little bit if necessary, but we really want the children to 'DO IT' themselves as much as possible.

This challenge is open to all children aged between 2 and 16 inclusive


We have not 1, not 2 but 3 surprise parcels of crafty goodies, hand picked by Simon. All winners are chosen at random, Good Luck to all!

My youngest made an underwater scene from clay. He is very interested in the sea and in sea animals.

The sand and the sunken airplane were created with clay, inside a plastic container. Leo added a Lego piece as corals and a some of his plastic sea animals. Only the Lego piece is glued to the sand. 

The airplane was painted with Ranger Distress Paint, making it look like it has been at the bottom of the sea for a long time.

The darker spots around the plane are small pieces of debris from the crash.

This challenge will remain open until 9am EST on 29th August. The winners will be drawn at random as soon as possible after the challenge closes.

THIS CHALLENGE IS FOR CHILDREN ONLY.

Please Note: creations submitted by anyone over the age of 16 will be deleted.

You can enter as many times as you like, just remember to add your link into the inlinkz system at the bottom of this post! If you have several entries on the same post add ?1. ?2, ?3 etc at the end of the url and they will be accepted into the system.

Please add the age of the child after their name. You can find more information here.

Thank you for visiting! 

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin