avery elle

Good morning!!! Happy Monday…. and it is most definitely a happy Monday. Today is not only the new release for Concord and 9th (where you can receive TWO freebies for ordering during their Customer Appreciation Month), but it is also the start of a new challenge over on the Where Creativity Meets C9 blog!! Our prompt this month is: Spring. Ah, lovely spring. We keep being teased with a day or two of beautiful, crisp, sunny weather… and then it goes back to being rainy and cold and BLAH. (With the occasional snow flurry thrown in.) Winter has my official permission to shoo fly, don’t bother me.

Anyway, I wanted to challenge my inner Persephone, goddess of spring, with a cheerful, springy card. I have been in love with this gorgeous Wonderful Florals stamp set since I saw the tiniest little peek of it from CHA, so I was SO happy to have an excuse to put it to work!

For today’s project, I started with an A2 panel of Arches Hot Press watercolor paper and embossed the beautiful main floral image from Wonderful Florals in silver embossing powder. (I wanted those intricate details and solid portions of the stamp to be nice and smooth, so I chose to use Hot Press paper instead of the textured Cold Press.) Once that was cool, I watercolored those beautiful flowers with Avery Elle’s watercolors. Those new watercolors are just the perfect shades of springtime pastel, and you can make them super concentrated or just give a light wash of color. I made sure to tape my panel down to a cutting board, as I knew I would be using quite a bit of water for these images, and I didn’t want my paper to warp.

While my watercolors were drying nice and flat, I heat embossed the rest of the greeting from Wonderful Florals onto some light aqua card stock strips. After my watercolor had dried, I mounted my panel onto an A2 card base, then added some Crystal Lacquer from Hero Arts to the large “wonderful” letters in the center of the floral image. The shine on those letters really helps them to pop from the center of the image. I popped up the sentiment strips with dimensional foam adhesive and added a few Sparkling Clear sequins for some sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project today! Now, it’s your turn! Use your Concord and 9th products to create your own Spring-themed project to add to our linkup on the Where Creativity Meets C9 blog. You could be eligible to win a $25 shopping spree to the Concord and 9th store, and one lucky winner will be chosen to be a guest artist for a future challenge! Don’t forget to follow all of the rules so that your project isn’t disqualified should you be chosen a winner!

Now, go get inky (and maybe get your shop on for the Concord and 9th new release…. did I mention there are two freebies up for grabs?!?). Have a marvelous day!

Good morning! Today, the Ellen Hutson Design Team has a special treat for you today… we are partnering with the Avery Elle Design Team to bring you a blog hop featuring the new Avery Elle Liquid Watercolors!

For today’s hop, I have created a fairly whimsical card… a far different aesthetic than the card that I created for my video. I love how Avery Elle has such an eclectic collection of styles! I have really enjoyed playing with these liquid watercolors recently. I had a video up on the Ellen Hutson blog earlier this week (which you can see here or watch here on YouTube) in which I discuss my thoughts on these new watercolors. They are great fun, especially if you’re new to watercoloring. They have a great price point for just getting your feet wet, too.

For my project, I use the absolutely darling Pixie Dust stamp and die set from Avery Elle and combined it with a pretty ombre wash background to create a whimsical fairy card! To create the ombre wash, I taped my Arches A2 sized panel to a cutting board, then used a wide wash brush to add Sapphire Liquid Watercolors to the top of the panel and Cherry to the bottom, mixing the two in the center to create a sunset effect. (You can watch the technique in action in the video mentioned above!)

For the fairies, I die cut and silver heat embossed the fairies and some clouds onto some more Arches Cold Press watercolor paper, then watercolored them with a variety of the Liquid Watercolors, mixing and matching to create the hair and skin tones. For brown, I mix colors on the opposite sides of the color wheel, mainly oranges and greens. For the silvery black haired fairy on the bottom, I mixed Sapphire with Mimosa and Sea Glass. I don’t know that I could replicate these exact shades again… there was a lot of mixing and matching going on until I got what I wanted haha!

I also die cut some vellum clouds (the Avery Elle clouds that I used are discontinued, but I’ve linked some comparable dies at the bottom!) and arranged my little scene on my card front. I adhered everything using dimensional adhesive, hiding the adhesive behind the fairies and solid clouds so that it wouldn’t show through the vellum. I also silver heat embossed the greeting from Pixie Dust onto the ombre card front. The final touch was some jewels from Pretty Pink Posh.

Well, that’s all for my project today! You definitely don’t want to miss any of the stops on this hop; the inspiration and tips on these new watercolors are absolutely fantastic! What’s a blog hop without prizes, right? Head on over to The Classroom to learn all of the details on how you can win some blog candy!!

Emily Midgett<— you are here!