Virginia's View - a new challenge site.

I was very happy to see my blogger friend, Virginia Lu, has started a new challenge blog called Virginia's View... and what a way to start... She chose an awesome theme for her first challenge... "Watercolour" Virginia was hoping for around 20 enteries.... but she is a very popular contributor to the crafting blogging world and we've gotten behind her....to date 308 entries.

Of course I had to try my hand at the challenge.  I do a lot of watercolouring with my distress inks.  So to get me back into the swing of card making I did a few cards using this technique.

First up a very delicate looking water coloured card.

I started by stamping a free stamp onto a textured card base in London Fog Memento ink after masking around the edges.  I then used Distress markers to water-colour the flowers and leaves.  I outlined the panel with a grey marker.  The sentiment which came with the main stamp, was stamped in the grey ink and a few gems added.

My second card is a bit more colourful



This was inspired by Jennifer McGuire's masked frame technique from CAS one-layer card class.  I made a mask for the frame and used some Hero Arts flowers to make the frame.  Once I had stamped the flowers I used distress inks and a water brush to colour them.  This one has also been entered into the Hero Arts Birthday challenge.

And finally I did a card as part of my NZ Crafters monthly technique swap.  Our theme this month is "found" items.  You have to use something from around the house to do your stamping.  Can you guess what I used?



If you guess the end of a bunch of celery you guessed correct!  I had a half bunch of celery so stamped it twice for each rose on my background.  I liberally spritzed a piece of Tim Holtz water colour paper with water and then used Picked Raspberry distress ink to stamp the celery end.  I flicked some pink, green and black ink onto the background.  The roses (a free stamp from Visible Images that came with Stamp Crafter Magazine) were stamped and coloured with the distress ink mixed with some gold Spritz.  Once they were cut and mounted onto the card an added bit of Wink of Stella glitter pen was added.  Finished with the Hero Arts sentiment and some pink and green pearls and gems.   This will be on it's way to it's recipient shortly.

So you can see I've not wasted any time getting back into my card making.  I was too busy to miss it much but very happy to be getting inky again.

Thanks for stopping by.