Thinking of You

I found out recently that the mother of a woman I used to know passed away. So I decided to make her a card, just to let her know I'm thinking of her at this time.

I based my design on this card that I did a little while ago, which in turn was based on this one by Darlene DeVries. I did things a little differently this time. Because I knew I wanted to watercolor the butterfly, and also wanted to use what I thought was a non-waterproof ink to stamp the background pattern, I stamped, heat-embossed, and colored the butterfly first. As it turned out, I could have done it either way, since the background ink I ended up using is waterproof!

I cut a piece of 140 lb. Canson XL watercolor paper to 4.25x5.5". I wasn't sure if I wanted to trim it smaller, so I cut it to full A2 card size, figuring I could trim it later if I decided I wanted to. I stamped the outline butterfly from Hero Arts' "Butterfly" set in Versafine Onyx Black ink, then clear heat embossed it. I remembered at that point that I still had to add the body, so I stamped that in place with Versafine, and heat embossed it as well. Thankfully, the second layer of embossing powder melted into the first, so there's no bumpiness!

To color the butterfly, I used a damp paintbrush to pull color off my Caran d'Ache Neocolor II watercolor crayons. I filled most of the areas on the wings just with solid color, but blended 2 colors in a few of the sections.

Once the color was dry, I put the panel into my MISTI, and stamped the "Looped Circle" background, also by Hero Arts, in Hero Arts Soft Granite ink over the entire panel. I was glad I had decided to use the MISTI, because I did have to re-stamp, since I didn't get a good impression the first time. At that point, I decided to trim 1/8" off each side of my panel, so that I could have a small border.

I used one of the greetings from the "Jumbo Stripes" stamp set from Simon Says Stamp. I stamped it on a piece of black paper with Versamark ink, then heat embossed it with Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder. I cut that into a banner, and adhered it below my butterfly. Finally, I matted my panel with purple cardstock, and mounted it to a white A2 card base.

I'm entering this card in a2z Scrapbooking's May "Clean & Simple" challenge. (I hope this is CAS enough!)