Little Critters have BIG Dreams!

Happy Monday, friends! We have a new challenge for you this week - Little Critters. I think you can have a lot of fun with this one, and I bet we get a lot of cuteness! I have been waiting for the opportunity to use my cute little Lovebirds stamp, and I thought this was the perfect time, so I created a tag for them. 

I added a few more colors to my stash of Distress Oxide inks, and wanted to learn a bit more about using them. So, I watched a couple of videos while I played. Tim Holtz has a great demo at Creativation 2017 and Jennifer McGuire has a good one too, where she demos backgrounds and cards. 

So, using my fave color palette, I blended a bit of the distress oxides onto the tag.

Here's how it looks after spritzing with water and drying.

Then, I rubbed the colors onto the craft sheet, spritzed with water and lay the tag into it several times, drying between each layer. Since I had a lot left on the craft mat, I used a piece of watercolor paper to pick it up - why waste any, right?

Next step, stamping with water...yes, you heard me correctly! I spritzed water onto the stamp, stamped off once, then stamped directly onto the tag to get a subtle design. 

As you can see, I add a bit of orange, then using my MISTI, I stamped the saying with the purple, moved the tag slightly and stamped with the black - I was aiming for a shadow effect.

Closeup details with a bit of doodling to show the amazing texture distress oxides create.

A mix of lovely fibers to tie on the tag, two sweet lovebird popped up - remember I told you I put the leftover ink onto the watercolor paper? It worked perfectly to stamp my birds on!

Turn your cant's into CANS and your DREAMS into PLANS! I like this motto!!

I hope you've enjoyed my quick and easy tag, and try out some distress inks yourself. I know I have a lot more to learn about them, but I am having fun playing right now. Hope you will join us this week in our Little Critters challenge! 

Simon Says Stamp offers a $50 voucher to one participant!

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A great place to shop - fast and friendly!!

Simon is on Instagram! Use hashtag #sssmchallenge

I wonder what kind of little critters the design team has hold of this week? Let's head on over and check it out!

Add Some Texture!

Hello friends, and welcome to our Monday challenge! This week we are all about adding some texture to your work. I love texture! So many things can be used to add texture from pastes to embossing to layering. I chose to go simple with my texture and tried out the woodgrain paper from Tim Holtz. It is nice heavy paper and I love the woodgrain. 

I've been inspired by the lovely colors my teamie Andrea uses, and decided to work in nontraditional colors. I feel like I am in Dr. Seuss land! I started out by making blue wood with distress ink and splattering it with water.

Next, some distress spray and more water...

Since I have blue wood, why not pink trees? and an orange bird?

I knew what I wanted to say and since I could not find all the words, I made my own and I like the mix of styles. I took my white pen marker and went around the words and added little dots on one of the trees. Final step was to stamp the bubble wands in peacock feathers for some added interest (love these Andrea!)

Yes, I do choose a colorful life! I also choose lots of texture, and am curious to see how you will add texture to your project this week. I hope you will join us in our challenge and have some crafty fun! 

You could win the $50 voucher to Simon Says!

SUPPLIES:

                                       

                                       

A great place to shop!

Simon is on Instagram!

Be sure to head on over to the challenge blog so you can be inspired by the wonderful creative talent of the team!

Wood, World and Wild!

Isn't this a great challenge over at Creative Carte Blanche? Those gals are always coming up with something good, and you even have a couple of days to join the challenge - last minute like me! It turned rainy this afternoon, so I pulled out some things and decided to make a tag.

My wild birds are sitting on a tree limb made from wood tape and a wood product, cardboard, with two words.

Aren't these sweet little birds? 

stamps from Wplus9

I colored them using Ken Oliver's Colorbursts - such a cool, fun and messy(for me) product. Funny how I was aiming for blue/green and orange/red and now that I look at them, these could make a Christmas tag!

I used Finnabair's Emerald Metallic paint with the Tim Holtz stripes stencil to make the background.

Wonder what those cute little birds are twittering and tweeting? Bet they are celebrating spring just like us!