Happy Mail

Today's cards were made for the Cards For Little Hearts group.  Christina, the founder of this group, collects cards yearly.  In addition to her Heart Month Collection, she hosts a Holidays/Winter collection in November.  During the rest of the year, she collects "general" cards for two children's hospitals in Ohio.  You can read about Cards for Little Hearts at www.cardsforlittlehearts.com.

Now that I am done with all the Valentines I need, I plan on sending Christina at least a few cards per month.  They will be hello or thinking of you or sending hugs cards.  I will make good use of all of the stamp sets I have for cards that hopefully will bring smiles to children.  I used the Happy Mail stamp set from WPlus 9 and Copic markers to color the images on today's cards.  Have a great day!

One More Hummingbird

 I had one watercolored hummingbird left so I used him to create today's card.  He coordinated with some very, very long ago retired Designer Series Paper, paper I have been holding on to for a very long time.  I would love to see this paper come back.  I cut one layer using a WPlus 9 Sunshine Layers die and then used a circle die from Stampin' Up to highlight the hummingbird.  The green cardstock banner and the sentiment are retired SU products, too.  Even though I use products of many companies, I still have a soft spot for Stampin' Up.  Have a great day and find yourself a little stampin' time!

Watercolor Stamping

I hang around with some talented ladies.  At our last Cricut get-together, Kathy W and I made some cardstock stencils which she would use for the Valentines she was making.  Kathy uses Art Impression stamps and watercolor brushes (such as Tombow) to "paint" a scene.  She brushes a stamp with a watercolor marker and after stamping uses a lightly wet paint brush to pull the color out from the stamped image.  If you look at the tree trunks, Kathy stamped those using a brown water color marker to ink the image and then pulled that color into the middle of the tree trunks.  There are a number of videos on the Internet demonstrating watercoloring with Art Impressions stamps.

For today's card, Kathy covered her piece of watercolor paper with one of the heart stencils we had cut on the Cricut.  She then did her stamping/painting and when she removed the stencil the heart-shaped image is what was made.  She does a great job using these stamps and this technique.  I tried it and failed~~more than once!  Have a great day!

Watercolored Hummingbirds

Yesterday was like a Spring day so I decided to post a Spring-like card.   I stamped the hummingbirds on watercolor paper.  Stamped images don't stamp as well on this thick paper, so I used my Misti to stamp the images multiple times with black Versafine ink and then heat embossed the images.  I used my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens to water color the images.  The hummingbirds are from the Hummingbird Thanks stamp set by Pretty Pink Posh. The sentiment is from a Stampin' Up set and was also stamped a few times using the Misti.  A corner punch, sequins and a little designer paper complete the card.  Have a great day!