You Make Life Beautiful

My Favorite Things has been having their first session of Camp Create on their blog. Day One's theme was "Wonderful Watercolor." I created this card as a "pick me up" to send to Send a Smile 4 Kids, using MFT stamps & dies.

I had to play around with what size card I wanted, that would work for the design I had in mind. A2 size turned out to be just a bit too small, so I went for 4.5x7.25" instead. (I have envelopes made to fit that size, so every so often, I make a card to go with those.) After cutting a piece of Canson XL watercolor paper to that size, I laid out my dies & stamps to make sure everything would fit where I wanted it. I used my MISTI to stamp the greeting, from MFT's "Simply Fabulous Sayings," in Versamark ink, and then heat embossed it with Ranger Silver Pearl embossing powder.

My idea for the background was similar to the one Stephanie Klauck shared in the Camp Create post, to do a galaxy-type look. But rather than do a rainbow like she did, I wanted spots of color behind the butterflies. So I lightly traced around my dies on my watercolor paper, just so I would know where to apply color, and then erased just enough so my lines were barely visible. Since pencil gets trapped under watercolor & can't be erased afterwards, I had to do that so my outlines wouldn't show. I applied watercolor to each area. I then went around each spot of color with black watercolor, blending in around the edges of the colored areas to create soft edges. I did a few coats of each color & black, drying with my heat tool in between coats, to build up the color intensity.

I die cut all the butterflies & bodies from MFT's "Flutter of Butterflies--Lace" set from pearlized cardstock by The Paper Studio. I used Perfect Paper Adhesive to glue them down to my background, applying the glue only to the middle portion, so the wings were free to bend up. Then I glued the bodies in place. As one final touch, I decided I needed some sparkle. So I used the Light Gold color from my Gansai Tambi Starry Colors watercolor set to add flicks to the panel. The gold did get on the butterflies, but I don't really mind. Finally, I adhered my panel to a white card base.

I'm also entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday challenge: "Emboss It."