Hello and welcome to my blog! I am so happy to take part in the Simon Says Stamp Hop To It blog hop, in celebration of the new release of Hop To It Simon Says Stamp Exclusive products. This release is so much fun and perfect for many different themes: spring time, children, sunshine, flowers, Easter and more. The design inspiration behind the new release is to inspire. I find inspiration everywhere, sometimes in quite unexpected places. What inspires you? Don't miss all the inspiration and there is a prize to be won on every stop of the hop.
I made an art journal page and a card. The journal page is a stepped out tutorial as well.
I love the Watercolor Friendly Flowers set and the coordinating dies and immediately wanted to make a watercolour flower garden in my journal. I enjoy making these types of happy looking journal pages and they can help brighten up any day. You can of course use the same techniques for cardmaking, tags, or scrapbooking layouts.
These are the stamps and dies from the Hop To It collection that I used for my art journal page: Watercolor Friendly Flowers Set, Handlettered Encouragement, and Crosses.
Start by die cutting a circle from Simon Says Stamp's fabulous Masking Paper Label Sheets, using the circle die in the Crosses set. The Masking Sheets are wonderful and works great for so many techniques. Today I used it to mask out a sun on my page.
Ink up a Sizzix Cutting Pad with Distress Inks, by simply pressing the ink onto the plastic. I used this order: Salty Ocean, Tumbled Glass, Crushed Olive, Shabby Shutters and finally Peeled Paint.
Mist a generous amount of water on the inked cutting pad. I just love the look of those inky droplets.
Press the inky cutting pad into your journal, use scrap papers to prevent getting ink on the opposite page. The inks will blend in sometimes unpredictable ways and create a landscape background. When the ink is dry, carefully remove the mask.
Ink up the three flowers in the Watercolor Friendly Flowers set with pink, purple and red Distress Inks, using two colours for each flower. Mist the stamp about 4 times with water before stamping on watercolour paper. The inks will blend and form pretty watercolour flowers. Do the same with the stems, using Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint.
One of my favourite aspects of the Watercolor Friendly Flowers set is that there are two stamps for each flower, one bold and solid and one outline stamp, great for lots of fun techniques. When the ink is dry, stamp the outline flowers with Watering Can Archival Ink. The grey ink gives a softer impression than if you would have used black. Do the same with the stems.
Use one of the flower center stamps and white emboss centers in each flower.
Die cut all the flowers and stems. I made too many flowers, since I had such fun combining the different Distress Inks, and will have some leftovers for another project.
Stamp the sun from the Color and Sunshine set around the masked circle with embossing ink and white emboss. Softly ink the sun with Scattered Straw.
I wanted the background to have a little more texture and inked dots with Iced Spruce, using the Falling Snow stencil. Later, I also decided to add some Texture Paste hearts, applying the paste with a palette knife through the Falling Hearts stencil. The sentiment was stamped with Watering Can ink.
Glue the flower stems and flowers to the background, overlapping them slightly.
Once you start stamping these flowers in different ink combinations, you'll see how hard it is to stop. You'll never get two flowers that will look exactly the same.
The last part of the sentiment was stamped with the Life's Journey set.
I also made a card:
Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today!
Remember that Simon Says Stamp is giving away a prize on every stop of the hop, just leave a comment for your chance to win. The random winners will be drawn on 23 February, and Simon Says Stamp will contact them.
Your next stop on the hop is the wonderful Yoonsun Hur.
If you get stuck somewhere along the way, these are all the stops on the blog hop.
Anna-Karin Evaldsson (you are here)
Don't miss the fabulous inspiration!
Happy crafting!
Anna-Karin
Supplies:
