Happy Birthday - Watercolor scene

This birthday card is for my youngest son and again, what to do what to do. I really wanted something more adultish for sure and then decided on watercolor with a stamp. It was pretty easy to paint a faint background and then just stamp the trees and blend in the bottom to look like dirt. I added a sentiment and still felt this to be a little plain and off balance so I added in some washi tape and enamel dots.  The tree stamp is from Stampscapes.

Zappy Birthday!

Well if you haven't noticed I have been MIA for two weeks, sorry about that and if you have returned as a faithful reader I appreciate that.  I have officially decided I need a clone, I have far too many hobbies that I partake in, so besides watching the grandbabies part time during school and full time when not, I bake, garden, scrapbook, stamp, sew, water color, attempt to run 2 etsy stores and then I have recently decided to do home maintenance which is really a code word for deep cleaning, minor repairs and fresh coats of paint and with all those items I try to walk and hour a day and lift weights for 20 min. I just don't have enough time to do it all and sometimes projects have to take back seats to others, this frustrates me to no end.

Any hoo I am back to some much needed crafty time. I have the expo this weekend and am looking forward to it, I even rented a room for the night so I don't have to drive 45 min late at night to turn around and get up early to go back.

Now that I am focusing on the expo and all things crafty for a bit I knew I needed to finish some birthday cards. Up first is one that is long over due for my oldest grandson who recently turned 18. Let me tell you guy cards are a pain, they don't want some cutesy animal or some flowers so I tried to keep it on the numerous side. I am fearful this might look a little too feminine and if I need to I will substitute it for another last minute. We haven't celebrated his birthday yet so I still have some time.

The silhouette die is from MFTS and the sentiment, bubble and lightning bolt are from Papertrey Ink.

I used watercolors to create the back ground then used a white pen and a clear glitter pen to give the illusions of stars.

Happy To Be Stuck With You

Making all these Valentine cards made me realize I really should make one for my dear hubby, I certainly don't want to forget him. I had spied these cacti from MFTS and figured this would work for a guy card, not quite a flower so it should work.

I also wanted to use some watercolors so I painted them and only diecut the frame out, Left the card pretty simple only adorned it with a small epoxy heart and popped up the stamped panel. I was lucky in that the stamp set had a sentiment I thought was perfect, I was thinking I was going to have to print my own but was lucky I didn't need to.

I tried not to use pink but I knew it needed a colorful background pp so after scouring through my papers I did settle on this pink, green and blue plaid from MFTS but I think it doesn't come off too feminine at least I am hoping my dh doesn't think so.

Be Mine?

Funny but I tired to use this card base on two other previous cards I made but found it just didn't work. So there is sat on my desk getting pushed from one side to another and I just felt like it needed to be used. Finally I tried putting a black heart and liked the way it look, then added white and figured I was on a roll, I then stamped the be mine but then it just sat some more because I just couldn't find anything else I liked. Still sitting on my desk I started going through my stamps and  pulled out this little monster from Technique Tuesday and thought it would make a great card for one of the little ones. After he was colored and fussy cut I put him on the card and decided it would work. I then added a punch of red hearts and viola I finally got to use the base card, no more getting pushed aside. . 

Love is all you need.

With all these scrap papers I previously cut I was bound and determined to use them up, and I found heart dies that were stashed inside another die package so it was kind of like getting new product because I didn't even know you had it. Again another quick 5 min card. 

Tickled Pink

After doing all these quicky cards lately I felt like I wanted to do a little more. I whipped out my watercolors and created the background and knew this little piggy would be a perfect use for the card. Most of everything just needed to either be stamped, colored and die cut, or just die cut. 

I was going to find a Valentine's Day sentiment but when I saw the tickled pink I figured it was more of a perfect fit. 

Sweet Love

I really really wanted to do something with this heart die plate I had from Papertrey Ink. I love that it cuts all those small hearts out but in this case I really wanted to keep them in, I just wanted a few left out, but I had to decide which few. I knew once I had one out that it would look cool with a color in the background and also popping the die cut card would look cool, but I didn't want to die cut a second card panel when I only wanted a few hearts and in different colors.

Once I figured out I wanted a trio of three I thought to emboss the base card using the same die plate, I just had to sandwich it in my cuttlebug for embossing instead of die cutting. Now it would be simple to just use the three hearts I picked out and to realign them behind the panel. I felt smart.
I used double sided tape on the back to keep all those hearts in their place, after all I didn't want any falling out on me.

Now what to color those three hearts with, I thought about pressing them in ink, eh too messy, perhaps coloring them with copic markers then I spied my Tim Holtz distress crayons, after a test run I realized these would work. Whew much easier to color and use my finger to smear the color around.

I then thought I wanted to stamp something in the hearts but I spotted this cursive love die that I think is from Papertrey Ink, I like that look much better. I then stamped a bunch of loves in different paper till I found the one I wanted and used all the extras to stack together and make my word thick so I wouldn't have to pop it up. Then found this tiny sweet stamp also from Papertrey Ink and lastly a enamel heart from Doodlebug and finally the card is complete.