Create a smile: Hello Friend..

Hello and welcome!! Laurie here with my first post as an official member of the Create A Smile Stamps design team! I was a part of the CAS Challenge Team last year and enjoyed every minute of it. I am beyond thrilled to be back and part of this team!!

For my first project, I went with more of an elegant, floral card.

I wanted to create something soft and pretty but also with a little shine.

I started by silver heat embossing one of the larger branch images as well as two stand alone blossoms and leaves onto a piece of mixed media paper. I kept the watercoloring very simple by using only two colours, one pink shade and one green shade.

I added a bit of water onto each section of the image, then dropped in a touch of colour. This is the wet-on-wet technique. When the colour is dropped into the water, it spreads and blends on its own. The hardest part about this in not to play around with it! Try to let it do it's own thing!

When the painting was done and everything was dry, I used my scissors to fussy cut everything out. Call me crazy, but i actually like fussy cutting!

I created a square card base that is 4.25 X 4.25 inches. I love clean and simple cards but I also love layers so I used a couple of the Cool Cuts Stitched Circle Frames. On the larger circle, I used the Diagonal Grid Stencil along with a light blue ink. This gave a bit of background colour as well as a bit of texture. I silver heat embossed the sentiment on the smaller circle as well as inked the frame portion in the same blue ink.

I played around with all the elements and after deciding where everything should go, used a combination of foam adhesive and liquid glue. As a final touch, I added a few clear sequins.

I watercoloring is a little out of your comfort zone, try heat embossing the images! This creates a "well" so the water stays contained and your colours won't bleed! This is my favourite way to watercolour!

When it comes to all the Stitched Frame Dies in the CAS shop, remember that each die cuts two pieces! This gives you so many options when designing your cards or layouts!