Happy Mother's Day to all of you hard-working moms out there! I have a mom and a mother-in-law that I painstakingly made cards for last night. They took a long time to make, but I was having fun and it was for a good occasion!
I'm taking the Online Card Classes Watercolor for Card Makers class, and I watched a video by my favorite stamper, Jennifer McGuire. So I of course had to try her technique!
In her video, she embossed her image with white embossing powder. On my first card I, of course, forgot to do that and stamped it in black Archival ink. I was not happy with the result until I finished the entire thing. I almost tossed it, but with watercoloring you can play around with the colors even after it's dried. That's what I did here. I didn't give up. I colored the image with Distress markers in fired brick and spun sugar for the flowers and mowed lawn and forest moss (?) for the leaves. I didn't like the way the leaves came out at first (too muddy-looking), but they look fine after a while. I added some blue in the background with tumbled glass. This actually wasn't my favorite of the two, but looking at it now, I like it so much more!
Here is my second attempt, the way Jennifer did it. I like it much better in person. It really is so much prettier than how the camera captured it. I embossed this one in white embossing powder. It was actually easier to color embossed. Here I used spun sugar and picked raspberry for the flowers and just mowed lawn for the leaves. I like the leaves better in this one. Again, the background was colored with tumbled glass, but I think I used too much color. I finished both off with some banners, the sentiment, pearls, and some Wink of Stella shimmer which you cannot see in the picture.
I hope you have a great day with your families. We are off to our cabin for the day. It's supposed to be in the 70s and sunny today, something we so desperately need!
Thanks for stopping by!
Recipe
Stamps: Year of Flowers: Sweet Pea (PTI), Motherly Love (Flourishes)
Paper: Neenah white, Tim Holtz watercolor paper, certainly celery, pink pirouette, retired SU dp
Ink: Versamark, Archival black, Versafine onyx black, Distress markers: picked raspberry, spun sugar, fired brick, mowed lawn, forest moss, tumbled glass
Accessories: Spellbinder's die, pearls, white embossing powder, dimensionals
I was pressed for time and made these early in the morning yesterday. I didn't want to color or do anything too fussy because I was short on time, so I took out this 
You can see that the dp is doing most of the work! The label, from 
This one is my favorite. I love the brown with the pink and aqua. This dp was a little busier, so I had to stamp the sentiment on the label. I like the look!
I chose this paper from a K&Co. pack called Madeline. The side was punched with a Martha Stewart punch. The doily is actually created with the 
I received this beautiful image from 
I used PTI's Polka Dot Basics stamped in white craft ink. I was supposed to use some decorative scissors on the green lid, but in my haste I forgot! The strawberry is from Flourishes new Strawberry set. I used PTI's ribbon to tie it all up. Here's an aerial view of it.
Needless to say, the strawberries were eaten as soon as these pictures were taken! I LOVE strawberries! Here's a picture of the card with the gift box.
I made this card for one of the My Time challenges and also for a Copic Creations challenge. I thought it was such a pretty gift and so did Maria! Oh, and the gift was a charm with ruby stones (not real!) which is her birthstone.
I looked at this a couple of times before I decided what I was going to do. There is a lot of inspiration to take away from this...the colors, the different patterns, the layout, and the embellishments to name a few. I decided on the colors, some of the patterns, and the two red stripes going across. This is what I came up with.
I just received this 
