I’ve been getting the Pink & Main Crafty Courtyard card kits since March of 2020 and I’ve felt really inspired by them. That combined with wanting to use more of my stash means I was inspired to create a card out of the really fun June 2020 Pink & Main card kit. (This card kit is unfortunately sold out, but Michelle still has other past kits and items from past kits available here.)
I was having a vision in purple, and so that’s what I focused on, pulling in all the purple everywhere.
The whole thing started with a spare piece of white card stock and a sudden desire to use the wave stencil from the card kit. I considered ink blending, but had an idea Nuvo Glimmer Paste would look amazing. I have four pots of it, and one is definitely more ocean colored than the others, but like I said, I was drawn to purple. Or, rather, Tanzanite Lavender. I then decided to ink blend some Shaded Lilac Distress Oxide Ink on a card panel using my Vivace Oval Beauty Brushes. I have a Ranger Mini Mister with water mixed with Perfect Pearls powder. It sprays a very fine mist, which gives great overall sparkly coverage. To get more blobs of sparkle and some water marks, I sprayed some of it into the palm of my hand and dropped it on the paper.
Please let me tell you about my poorly colored octopus. I am not a very good Copic colorist. I am intimidated by Copics, which means I’m too worried about coloring badly, which means I don’t practice, which means I remain bad at it. I am trying to break that thought spiral by…Just doing it. So that’s why you have this very dark octopus with hardly any discernible features. After watching all sorts of card makers use Copics, when I sat down to do it, I completely forgot all tips and tricks.
BUT, I kept it. I decided to use a contrasting color for the flowers, which is why they are yellow, and I think they look great against all the purple. I fussy cut it out with my Tim Holtz Mini Snips and then used a Distress Marker in Black Soot. If you haven’t seen this done before, after you fussy cut out an image, especially if you’re cutting right on the stamped line, you can use a black marker of some sort (Momento has one, the Distress Marker works well, I wouldn’t recommend a Sharpie or other alcohol based markers) to outline the cut edge in black. It hides any mistakes you make fussy cutting and gives it a nice finished look.
I didn’t want the purple octopus to disappear in a sea of purple, so I used my We R Memory Keepers Nested Scallop Dies to die cut out a white scallop circle. I used the fifth die from the center. The sentiment comes from the Ocean Waves stamp set and says “You’ve been occupying my mind,” which is a sweet thematic way to say you’re thinking of someone. I trimmed out the sentiment and attached it to the card on the right. Finally, I adhered some of the sparkly shimmery confetti that was included in the kit.
Finally, let me tell you about my $2.99 Tuesday Morning purchase that I’m trying to make work for stencils. I found a two piece cake frosting smoother. There’s the smaller one pictured above and a wider one. I realized that I can’t get them into the tub of Glimmer Paste, so I ended up using my palette knife to get the paste out and the frosting spreader to smooth it out over the stencil. It worked well, but I’m not sure yet if it’s worth having another tool to clean off. The jury is still out. I did like having a wider area of coverage and I was able to clean up a lot more paste and get it back into the jar when I finished, so that’s a plus. Also…Pixie Spray is wonderful and I’m so happy I was finally able to pick some up.
Thank you for joining me! My next post will be more July Stash Bash! Watch this space!
CraftyAs 