With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I thought turning my heart to thankfulness for today's project would be perfectly in keeping with the season. As a Canadian, we celebrate our Thanksgiving in October but any time of the year is a good one to count your blessings and I was happy to do so once again.
Our product feature this week is Honey Bee Stamps and their line of beautiful and super sweet stamps and dies is amazing. I'm using the Thanks & GIving stamp set which is the most amazing and flexible thank you stamp set that I have ever seen. It's perfect for Thanksgiving but can be used all year long for thank you cards.
As you can see it is so flexible and can be mixed and matched to put together an amazing variety of sentiments!
I've started off my card by taking a card front sized panel of Solar White card stock and stamping thank and ful on the front of it in Jet Black Ink.
I'm using a combination of background techniques on this design and one of them is masking. To play along with the thankful hearts theme, I'm using the middle size die from the Essentials by Ellen Folk Hearts Die Set and die-cutting a sheet of Inkadinkado Stamping Mask Paper with it.
I then peeled off the backing and laid the die cut heart mask over the majority of the sentiment to keep that area clear. As you can see, I've also stamped on some accompanying words from the stamp set that go along with my theme.
Once the words are on there, I ran the entire panel through my Big Shot Die-cutting Machine with the large stitched rectangle from Blueprints 13 Die-namics from MFT Stamps. This has got to be one of my most used dies as it's perfect for creating a large layer from over the card base of a design.
Next step is to add some color! I love Distress Inks and they always make beautiful backgrounds. I've done something a little different with this background and instead of just blending the color as I sponge it on, I'm using a large Jumbo Dauber to twist the color on in a circle. It gives a beautiful pop of color and a bokeh-like effect. I start light with Worn Lipstick and Dried Marigold and then work up to adding in Abandoned Coral and Spiced Marmalade. All the warm pinks and oranges are perfect for this time of year.
Once the background is done, remove the masking paper to reveal the white heart.
To add yet another dimension to the background, another easy technique with dye inks is to add droplets of water. I wet a clean paintbrush and then flick the water over the background to add the water droplets which bleed the color to form interesting spots.
And while I was getting "spotty", I decided to use the same idea but only this time with color. I pressed a Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink pad to the corner of an acrylic block to express some ink color. Then I picked it up with a wet paintbrush...
And flicked the paint over the entire card to add a more distressed look that is perfect for Fall.
Finally, I adhered my dried background panel to a Solar White Card Stock card front and added in some embellishments. A sweet little Maya Road rose is adhered over a twist of hemp twine. And on the other side of the design, I added in some Clear Sparkling Sequins with Glossy Accents.
Here's a close-up of the finished card design.
Thanks so much for joining me today in the CLASSroom! One thing I'm always thankful for is to be able to share my creativity and share techniques with others!
Julia