This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!
Hi friends! I have some super sweet inspiration to share with you today to start your April!! This week happens to be both my mom’s birthday and my little boys’ fourth birthday, so I wanted to create some birthday inspiration using the new Hey Sweetie from the Simon Says Stamp Be Bold release. I love pairing whimsical images with my attempt at realistic no-line coloring, challenging myself to add as much shadows and shape as I can to the images. For my cards today, I challenged myself to do some no-line OLO marker coloring and some no-line Distress Ink watercoloring to create two festive projects. Let’s get started with the details!
My first card is a unique one for me, featuring a shaped card created with the new Hey Sweetie stamps and dies. I started by stamping the large milkshake image onto some Hammermill white cardstock using Contour Ink, then used my OLO markers to add lots of vivid color to the image. I tried to pay special attention to the direction from which the light was coming, adding extra dark shadows on the right hand side, implying that the light was coming from the left side.
After I had finished coloring my milkshake and a cherry to go on top, I used the coordinating dies from Hey Sweetie to die cut the images. I wanted to create a shaped card, so I created a card base that was slightly smaller than the milkshake image and placed my die so that the folded edge of the card was contained within the die and ran it through my die cut machine. This created a shaped card base upon which I could adhere my colored die cut.
After I had created my shaped card base, I adhered my colorful die cut to the front of the card with some Tear-rific Tape. I stamped a sentiment from Hey Sweetie onto some more white cardstock using black pigment ink, then embossed it with clear embossing powder to make the greeting super crisp. I die cut the sentiment, then popped it up on the card with some foam squares. Finally, I added a few Rainbow Splash Drops to create little bubbles of condensation on the glass!
For my second project, I did some no-line watercoloring using Distress Inks with the sweet cupcake from Hey Sweetie. I began by stamping the cupcake on Distress Watercolor Cardstock using Scattered Straw ink. To watercolor the image, I used Distress Inks in shades of Speckled Egg, Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet, and Scattered Straw. Distress Inks make great watercolors, because they’re water reactive and blend beautifully together, so you can create all kinds of custom shades outside of the gorgeous rainbow of colors in the Distress line! I mixed and matched these four shades to create lots of dimension on this cupcake image, then used some opaque glitter watercolors from my stash to make an extra special bow around the cupcake base.
For the card base, I die cut the Box and Ribbon Gift Card Holder die from some plain white cardstock. This die is amazing; you can use the base with the large bow die as I did in THIS post, but you can also use it on it’s own to embellish with whatever stamps and dies you choose! I used my scoring board to get a really crisp fold line, then added some ink blending on the front of the card. I first lightly blended some Tattered Rose ink on its own, then used the Twinkle Stars stencil to blend some Victorian Velvet stars and splattered some more glittery watercolors over the blended and stenciled area. I love the magical effect the combination of the blending, stenciling, and splatters creates, especially for a birthday card!! Who doesn’t want a bit of magic on their birthday, right?
After I had finished with my card base, I die cut the Fancy Happy Birthday die from some of Simon Says Stamp’s Rose Gold Metallic cardstock. I popped up the die cut cupcake and sentiment with some foam adhesive, then added a few Lilac Pawsitively Dazzling Gems for a bit of added sparkle!
Well, that’s all for my projects today, projects honoring my mom’s and my little twin boys’ birthdays this week. Side note: I can’t believe that my little guys are turning four. It seems like a lifetime ago that they were the teeniest little peanuts all snuggled into me, and now they’re big boys (literally… they’re both 95th-plus percentile for height!) who go to school, make friends, practice their writing, sweetly sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” play together and separately, give the most precious hugs, and use their imaginations so beautifully. The days are long sometimes, but the years are oh, so short. We were going to take them on their first “little boy only” trip to the zoo tomorrow, but I think the weather has other plans for us, unfortunately. Hopefully next week!
Thank you so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
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