TGIF Everyone! Normally, everyday is like a Friday for me, since I only have to go downstairs to my "office" and my "work" is something I love, but this has been a long kind of stressful week for me with refinancing going on for our house (we close in a couple days -- YEA!) and Christmas shopping (all online so not as much hassle, but still a little time consuming).
However, I do have something even more exciting to add --- this week I am the Guest Designer for the Playing in Paradise challenge over at
Scrapbooker's Paradise! I won Challenge #94. You can see the card I won with
here. Not only did I win a crafty prize, I get to be a part of the team for this week's challenge. So much fun! I definitely feel like Christmas has come early for me!
So this week's Playing in Paradise theme is Winter Birds. An easy challenge, I thought, only I discovered I have very few bird stamps and at first I was a little stumped at what to do. They would have been ok, but I also wanted to use my fir tree branch stamps I received in my prize package from another Scrapbooker's Paradise designer, Jessi Fogan. So, what to do? I dug out an old painting stencil, a cardinal, that I have had for years.
And this is what I created:
I'm very happy with it too! The bird came out really beautifully. I taped the plastic stencil down on watercolor paper. Then, I covered his beak before doing a kind of sponge painting on him with Fire Brick distress ink mixed with water. On top of that, I sprayed some Postbox Red Dylusions paint and topped that off with some homemade Red Spice Glimmer Mist. For the beak I added a bit of straw distress ink. I then colored the mid scection of his beak black with a sponge pencil and black pigment ink and a black Copics marker. You can't see it very well in the photo, but I added a black gem for his eye too.
The pine needles and pine cones are Inkadinkadoo stamps (part of my prize pack from Jessi Fogan). I love these! I stamped them and cut them out for more depth. I attempted to add a little gold glitter to the pine cones for a little glimmer. I must invest in one of those glitter pens! LOL The birdhouse in the background is a Sizzix die and I used patterned paper from Anna Griffin. I used the same paper for the sentiment tag as well, tying off the tag with thin kraft string. Everything is adhered to the cream background that is embossed with a Spellbinders' M-Bossabilities folder.
I may have gotten off with a slow start with this one, but I had a lot of fun putting it together and seeing it all fall into place. I want to thank Pam and all the other designers at
Scrapbooker's Paradise for having me guest design. So much fun! I hope I get to do it again sometime in the future!
Have a great weekend and I hope you give this challenge a try and peak in at Scrapbooker's Paradise and check out all the other designer's cards!
Blessings!
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