Apologies for the lack of posting yesterday, it was the second day in a row that I awoke to no power. And after a day at work followed by a mandatory work event, it was pretty late when I got home and hardly worth posting. So here’s the card showcasing another stamp from the Love You Lots hostess set that I’d intended to post yesterday.

This is all one stamp and I love the elephant and his friend the mouse; it’s a totally adorable image. Here I made a general card that I can add a sentiment to the inside when I come to use it. I stamped the image in my favourite archival basic black and, after leaving it for a few minutes to ensure that it was really dry, used smoky slate and an aquapainter to colour it in. To give them something to stand on, I used pear pizzazz and layered the colour three times (with drying times in between) so that I have dimension rather than a flat wash of colour. Before putting my watercolour paper on a pear pizzazz card base, I added a mat of basic black which is just 1/8 inch larger than the watercolour paper. And it’s that easy – a quick clean and simple adorable card. As I said earlier in the week, you need this Love You Lots set!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

I was intending to play with washi tape for today’s card, but yesterday afternoon I was showing Julia the new stamp sets that I got earlier this month. And I realised that I haven’t yet played with Love You Lots. It’s one of the hostess sets which means that it’s only available using Stampin’ Rewards but it also means it’s very good value. The 8 piece set was just $9. This set also lends itself perfectly to the current challenge at CAS on Sunday, which is black, white plus one colour.

I started by watercolouring the image until I realised that I was just layering on more red to get to what is full strength real red so what was the point? Especially when I layered a little impatiently without waiting for the previous layer to dry and the edges started to blur. So I stamped the image using the archival basic black onto ordinary whisper white card stock, coloured it in with a real red stampin’ write marker and cut a black square at 2 1/8 inches to give a small frame to my 2 inch square of whisper white. I then positioned the image and used my stamp-a-ma-jig to get the sentiment where I wanted it. Only after that was done successfully did I add the image to the card, popped up with dimensionals. I’d like to say that my stamp was still inked up and so I used it for the envelope, but actually I’d already cleaned it. I’m sure the extra cleaning – and thus conditioning – is good for the new stamp! I’ve a good mind to go and play with the rest of the adorable images in this set now.

Whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re having a fun weekend. I’m going to spend the afternoon crafting.

See you tomorrow,

Liz