I’ve has a fairly productive card-making weekend.  I was taking a little break from Valentines and decided to top up my stash of birthday cards.  I specifically focused on making cards using paper I’ve had for a while with new stamps that haven’t been inked.

I got this Whipper Snapper stamp before Christmas but only managed to get it cling-foam mounted (I buy the bare rubber and mount the stamps myself to stretch my stamp-spending budget) Saturday morning (along with 13 other stamps – I hate cutting the cling foam so I save the stamps up and do them all in one session).

I’m trying to use some of my older Basic Grey paper as well as some K&Co paper – these are the two brands I tend to buy a lot of so it made sense to start with them.  I’m much more selective over what paper I buy now but there are still a lot of options from my “collecting” phase.

Here’s the card:

Of the half-dozen cards I made on Saturday, this one was my favourite.  It was a fun image to colour and the paper was so cheerful that it was very easy to embellish the card once the image was matted.  Now that I’m using a different camera I hope the pictures are doing my cards a little more justice these days (thanks, Rich).  I think you can even see the glitter I used on the scoops of ice cream -  I know you can see it on the prima flower and the centre brad. 

The paper on this card is Carolyn Gavin paper by K&Co.  It’s amazing and I hope she comes out with more some day.  It’s a great blend of funky, retro, fresh and “green” (as in earth-friendly).

My image was coloured using my own “hybrid” method of watercolouring.  I have been using reinkers instead of markers which makes for a much brighter wash of colour and I’m still learning the ropes (not happy with the “sky” colouring – too harsh!).  I went back over some of the shadowed areas with an SU marker to give those areas a little more definition.  I’m having trouble watering down the aquapainter to the right level for shading.

The sentiment is from SU’s Crazy for Cupcakes set and is my go-to sentiment whenever I make a card using an image with dessert-type foods.  I used my newest SU punch (got it in December with my birthday SU order) – you’re probably going to see this punch used fairly often for sentiments.  I can’t be bothered using Spellbinder dies for sentiments so punches are the obvious alternative.

Lots more to share this week so please check back!  Comments are always welcome!