Tag Archives: Hampton Art

Loving the “Loose” Watercolor Look

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I see so many beautiful watercolor cards on Instagram, and I’m in awe of these card makers’ talents.  I’m just not one of those free flowing card makers.  I tend to stay within my comfort box.  I love the look, but I struggle to achieve it.  Kristina Werner’s blog post today gave me some inspiration—watercolor smooshing.  I can handle that.  All you do is put some color (I used Distress Inks) on a piece of acetate, wet it and flip it over onto a piece of watercolor paper and smoosh it around.  It leaves you with a very free flowing colored background.

Here’s my finished card using Mermaid Lagoon and Tumbled Glass Distress Inks on a piece of Tim Holtz watercolor paper.  I white heat embossed some snowflakes from My Empty Nest Creations Hampton Art & Avery Elle Watercolor CardHampton Arts Snowflakes stamp set, and using Avery Elle’s Peace, Love & Joy die set, I cut the words out of Colorbok’s white glitter paper (I love it when I can use something that’s been in my stash for many, many years 🙂  I decided on only using peace & joyMy Empty Nest Creations Hampton Art & Avery Elle Watercolor Card from my die cuts.  After gluing them onto my watercolor base, I knew that I needed to balance the glitter out a bit, so I backed my base with a piece of the white glitter paper (unfortunately, the photos don’t really show it well).  All that was left was to attached it to a Neenah Solar White 110# A2 card base…easy, peasy.

I really loved trying this “new to me” technique.  Maybe this is just what I needed to get me to move out of my comfort box and give some other techniques a try, too. I’m off to check out Instagram, Pinterest and You Tube to get some more inspiration.  Thanks for stopping by!

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Getting Out of My Color Comfort Zone

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With the Help of Freshly Made Sketches

I know the trend in card making is now about florals and bright colors.  I’ve found myself getting too comfortable with those designs.  I wanted to change it up a bit (at least for me) by using colors that I never really even think of when starting a card – orange and navy.

Now, for the design…I went to one of my usual sites for inspiration–Freshly Made Sketches.  Here is the latest sketch…

FMS Final 280-001

While I usually don’t follow their sketches to the letter, I just received a new stamp set that is perfect—Hampton Arts Lift Me Up.  The detailed butterfly is gorgeous, and the sayings are terrific.

My Empty Nest Creations Card using Hampton Art's Lift Me Up Stamp SetI started off by white heat embossing the butterfly on navy Bazzill card stock towards the bottom right corner of the paper.  I wanted this image to be kind of a shadow for the main butterfly.  Next, I stamped the butterfly  with Momento Tuxedo Black ink and cut it out with the matching die.  I colored the butterfly with Copic markers and added a few small white extras with my white gel pen.  I attached the butterfly with foam tape to give it some dimension.  For the last touch, I covered the butterfly with my Wink of Stella clear glitter pen.  The “You Lift Me Up” greeting from the stamp set seemed to perfect, so I white heat embossed it on the bottom left corner.

I knew that I needed to accent the card with some orange to balance the orange butterfly, so I cut the navy card stock slightly so that I could have a strip of orange on the left side of the card.  Then, I realized that the card front was still a little dark, so I trimmed a slight edge off of the top and bottom so that the white card base would peak through.  Once all of that was done, this card still needed something else.  I’ve really been trying to incorporate sequins (another card trend) on to my cards, but I didn’t have any orange ones (remember, orange is not one of my go-to colors 🙂  Then, I remembered seeing Jennifer McGuire use her Copic markers to color some pearl accents.  I found my pearl dots and colored them with one of the same orange Copic markers that I used on the butterfly.  They were the perfect final touch on my card.

I hope you like it!