Personalized Birthday Card

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Today's card was inspired by the amazing Kelly Latevola. The technique called watercolour bleaching I learned from her.

I started by stamping the beautiful flowers from Altenew`s Adore You on a piece of water colour cardstock (with a little bit of masking) and heat embossed them in white. Then I added some ink blending to the flowers, to the leaves and to the whole background. For the bleaching you add water to the flowers and leaves and dabb it away. This way you take away some of the colour.
Then you add some shadows with alcohol markers.

I made this card for a special friend and wanted to personalize it. So I added the name. I die cut the letters that I needed from the background I created. For this I used Altenew`s Caps Bold Alphabet. Unfortunately they are out of stock at the moment (but will be back in stock mid-September) but the lower caps would work just as well for this technique and are in stock now: Altenew's Bold Alphabet Die.

I also die cut it from white cardstock and from vellum. I stacked up the white die cuts, on top I added the ones I die cut from the background and then the vellum ones. I didn't want to cover too much from the background but on the other hand I wanted to make the letters to stand out.

For a birthday sentiment I stamped one from Altenew's Birthday Builder on black cardstock and heat embossed it in white. Then I assembled the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

         

Mother's Day Cards

Hey stampers, Anni here.
Overhere in Germany Mother's Day is just a few days away. So I decided to make not only one (for my mother) but two (for the mother of a friend) Mother's Day cards.

Flowers are always a good choice for my mum so I went with the absolutly beautiful set Adore You by Altenew.

I stamped all the flowers and leaves in the set twice with Versamark on watercolour paper and embossed them in white. For the colouring I used my ZIG Clean Color Real Brush pens because I love flowers in watercolours. And the ZIGs are so bright and cheerful.

For one card I chose yellow, orange and red shades and combined them, for the second card I went with pinks and violetts and added a little bit of yellow, too.
What I really like about the ZIGs is how easily you can blend colours  - even if they are not so close. I add a darker colour for example a red) where I want to be my shadows. And then I use a lighter colour (for example a yellow) for the lighter areas and blend both colours with my water brush. The highlights I leave without colour till the blending. It is a really easy and you don't have to be an artist to achieve beautiful results.

After colouring all the flowers and leaves I fussy cut them. I didn't want a white border around my images but if you don't like fussy cutting there are coordinating dies available, too.

I wanted a German sentiment on my card that says For Mother's Day. As I don't have such a sentiment I decided to go with alphabet stamps. Lawn Fawn's Milo's ABC's is very elegant and easy to stamp. I spelled out the sentiment and embossed it in white on brown cardstock for both cards.

Thanks for stopping by and have a fabulous weekend.
Anni