It's beginning to look a lot like...

Hi, you've reached me on a chilly and breezy Saturday morning here in Nottinghamshire.  I've just been out across the fields with Mr Mo and his little ears were blowing inside out!

Here's a photo I took of him yesterday with a fun little fish-eye lens attached to my phone camera!  His nose isn't that big!!

Anyway, I'm glad to be back in my craft room with a steaming hot mug of tea and I just thought I'd share with you the three card projects that will feature in my classes this coming week.

At every class I ask the attendees what they want me to feature in future classes and recent requests have included sympathy and masculine cards.  So when I came to design this class it was sympathy cards I had in mind.

Last week in class we used the fabulous new product Brusho watercolour crystals and as there are so many ways to use this product I didn't want to stop there.  I had seen a card featured on Pinterest and I loved the design and technique so I decided to CASE it but use a sentiment that could be used to send condolences.

Let's have a closer look at that card, but first let me give a big thank you to Dutch Demonstrator Laura Kant for her original inspiration, thank you Laura!

I changed the colours to be fresh and spring like but still muted enough to match the sentiment.  Of course, this card could be sent to someone who is just having a bit of a tough time, isn't feeling very well or indeed has recently lost a loved one.  I used Tranquil Tide as my base card and have used watercolour paper as the layer.  The stamp set used for that big, bold butterfly was the new Beautiful Day set from the Spring/Summer seasonal catalogue which was heat embossed in white before laying down watercolour using the Brushos.  For this technique I actually mixed the Brusho with water in a palette before brushing them on like very wet watercolour paint.  This is how I managed to get the green just the shad I wanted; using the Prussian Blue and Yellow only.  Splatters were added to the white spaces and I finished off the wings with a brush over of Wink of Stella.. hope you can see this in the close-up photo. Oh, and those sequins are the new and just flipping brilliant self adhesive backed ones, again from the new seasonal catty.  I cannot tell you how something so small has made my day!  No more squeals of horror from class attendees when they can't pick up loose sequins to stick on ;-) I do love a sequin!

 For my next watercolour technique I went for a more muted and classic sympathy look.  I've used Perfect Plum as the base card and very vanilla as the layer with watercolour paper for the circle.  What I love about Stampin' Up! watercolour paper is that it's not whisper white and it's not very vanilla but it goes really well with either.  The stamp set used here is a freebie in this years' Sale-A-Bration and is called Lots of Lavender.  I stamped it first onto the very vanilla layer in basic grey archival ink - I used archival ink because it's designed to be used for watercolouring and I love that basic grey is just softer and less harsh than black.  Next I stamped the same image onto the watercolour paper and cut out using circle dies.  I only applied colour to the watercolour paper leaving the background image naked like a shadow.  The watercolour technique I used here was to squish some ink into the lid of the inkpad and use an aquapainter to apply the colour to the image in a controlled way, I did build up some definition by applying more saturated colour to some parts of the image.  In the stamp set there is a little stamp with just two dots which I used to get a slightly 'spattered' effect on the background just to stop it looking stark.

My final card demonstrates the third watercolour technique using our brilliant watercolour pencils.  If you've not used these before and have any notion of not being good at colouring in then I urge you to grab these and have a go!  To say that they are super easy and forgiving is an understatement.  OK, after sending sympathy I felt I needed to offer an uplifting message in this class too!  I used Melon Mambo as my base colour as I love the vibrance of this pink and it's a co-ordinating colour in the pencil set.  I used whisper white thick cardstock for stamping and colouring the image but whisper white normal for the background layer.  Again I used archival ink for the image but this time I used basic black because I wanted that monochrome bold look.
This card also features two co-ordinating freebies from Sale-A-Bration.  Firstly the stamp set is Amazing You and this year for the first time ever there is a set of Thinlits dies you can receive FREE which co-ordinate with the stamps.  The set is called Celebrate You and it has 3 very versatile sentiment dies 'Celebrate', 'Amazing' (featured here) and 'YOU'.  To add colour to the flower on this card I simply used the Melon Mambo pencil and laid down one layer of colour.  Next I put on some shading and this brilliant stamp almost tells you where to do this because of the lines on the petals - so easy!  I used a blender pen to go over the whole lot paying a little attention to blending the shaded areas and then I finished it off by adding a little more shading.  Honestly, it's easy peesy.  Don't believe me?  Book a place at my classes if you're in the Retford area and you will find out.  If you're not local and still want to learn then I'm going to make my first foray into Facebook Live next weekend and show you how I did the butterfly card... keep your eyes on my Facebook page!  If you love any of the products used then please shop with me by clicking the link, all on-line orders will receive a hand-stamped thank you card from me.