Stampin! with Jaydee

Hi Everyone.

Happy Thursday.  I don't know about you all... but I am so looking forward to the weekend!

One thing I also know... I seem to be obsessed with Altenew's stamps these days!  I avoided them for so long because I thought they were too complicated... all those different layers.  However, I have seen the error of my ways and a MISTI helps tremendously!   The other thing I realized is that you don't have to stamp all of the layers - you can just use them as outline stamps - as I did for my card tonight.

Before I created my card, I went looking for a little inspiration and found it in terms of a theme at casology and a sketch at freshlymade.

I began with a spare piece of water color paper and inked it up with versamark and then heat embossed with silver embossing powder.  I decided to go for a soft, feminine feel to the card.  Once I watercolored the flower, I left it to dry and set about working on the leaves.  I inked them up with my Zig markers, sprayed them and then did a little detail work with my pencils. All that was left was to color a section of the card base behind where I wanted to place the focal images.  I finished off the base layer with a few splatters using the same pink ink that I had used to color the rest of the card - except I made it more intense.

I then took another spare strip of watercolor paper, colored it with the same ink and then heat set the sentiment with the silver embossing powder.  All that was left to do...... assemble the card :-)

Here's my card:

I know it's a little hard to see the sentiment is actually a separate strip... but it really is:-)   I decided it wasn't quite finished, so added some water droplets using my Pico clear embellisher.  I love the soft, subtle color scheme and the texture created by the watercolor paper.

How about a closeup of the flower with the waterdroplets?

On a personal note:

I have a couple of photographs to share with you tonight.  I noticed that the little chickadee loves to drink out of the buddha fountain.  I managed to get a photograph of it sitting on top of buddha's head - can you see him?

maybe a closeup will help?

Isn't he the cutest little thing?

In honor of Lou's upcoming birthday - I purchased 24 butterflies for him to release into our garden.  These are butterflies that are native (meaning that they are natively here for at least part of the year) to Minnesota and 12 of the ones that arrived were Monarchs.  We let them out this morning and I managed to catch a few fleeting photographs before they woke up, fed a little and then wandered off to pastures green.

Isn't this a beautiful sight?

absolutely glorious!   More about letting the butterflies out tomorrow :-)

OK... one more :-)  The Orioles are still hanging around.  This female was attracted to the seed and I managed to capture a shot of her perched on the feeder:

• Cardstock:  Canson Watercolor paper
• Stamps:  Beautiful Day - Altenew
• Inks:  Distress inks, zig watercolor markers