Be your own kind of gorgeous. 

I am seriously so excited about the beautiful April kit from My Monthly Hero. It’s destined to be one of my favorite stamp sets, of that I’m sure. The dresses speak to my inner Parisian fashionista, plus they are so fun to watercolor, and you know me and my watercolors.

I started by heat embossing three of the pretty retro dresses using Versafine ink and clear embossing powder on some Canson Montval watercolor paper. Choosing a color scheme was a bit of a challenge, because as I looked through my Instagram feed the other day, I realized that I use far too much pink. So, in trying to branch out a bit, I decided to use coral and green, (which is obviously so different from pink…. haha!), but I thought it was very reminiscent of springtime in Paris. I watercolored the dresses using my Zig markers and a damp paintbrush.

For the background, I started with a panel of plain A2 sized white card stock and heat embossed the beautiful Garland background from Hero Arts using silver pearl embossing powder. In order to make this stand out more, I decided to use some my Clarity Stencil Brushes and Hero Arts Bubblegum dye ink to blend an ombre down the front of the panel, concentrating the color towards the top and growing lighter further down. I think this background looks like those beautiful lights that you would see strung up at a Parisian garden party in the 50’s. So pretty, and just enough pattern to add some interest to the background but not draw attention away from the dresses.

I added the sentiment from one of the add-on stamp sets for the April MMH kit. It’s an Audrey Hepburn set called You Are Fabulous. I simply stamped it in Versafine, heat embossed it in clear, and because some of the little pearls were showing through the embossing, I repeated the process once again using my MISTI, adding a second layer of embossing.

I die cut three of the adorable dress form dies from glossy black card stock and adhered those beautiful dresses to them, then adhered them to the ombre panel, using dimensional adhesive for the coral dress in the front. A few coordinating sequins and a pale mint mat for the ombre panel finished it off.

Well, what do you think? I’m in love with this set and can’t wait to play some more.

Have a fabulous day, friends!