hi.

I hate having things lying around,  incomplete.  I was cleaning up my craft area (can't call it a craft room, since it's just a little corner of our basement office/tv room/craft room/exercise room/sewing room) and I found a few greats elements that were begging to be turned into a card.

I had a leftover strip of diy patterned paper (made with PTI's "rosie posie", with a little "grunge me" hummingbird thrown into the mix), a chipboard frame, and a huge button on the table.

I sponged some peach ink onto my chipboard, added another bird-in-flight (from PTI's "happy trails"), threaded the button, and called it a card.

Sometimes my best cards are after-thoughts.  I really love this one!

How do you create?  Do your favorite cards take days to create, or come together more quickly?

MIM #36: faux watercoloring

This week's MIM challenge is faux watercoloring.

It involves stamping with a die ink, and using an aqua-painter (or a brush dipped in water) to make the ink bleed a bit.

In the tutorial, Lisa was careful to stay within the lines, but I did my best to grunge it up a bit.

I started with a kraft card-base and stamped images from PTI "grunge me"  and set it aside.

From a sheet of white cardstock, I die-cut a tag sale 3 shape and stamped images from simple circles in pool party, lucky limeade, soft suede, and peach parfait inks (all SU.)

With my aqua-painted, I blurred the lines around each circle and let the sheet dry.

I apologize that it's hard to see the blurring in the photos, but it's there!  The green and brown inks really bled, but the lighter colors really need a lot of saturation to start breaking down in the obvious way that I was looking for...

I stamped some paint splatter images from "grunge me" over-top and also the gridlines from lawn fawn's "schoolhouse backdrops."

I stamped the bird and sentiment from "grunge me" in a bold, black ink.

Thanks for looking!