Starry Starry Night.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week I'm looking to the sky on a starry night...

...and using my supplies to create a deeply sentimental card for an incredibly special friend, taking inspiration from the very beautiful Don Mclean song, 'Vincent'.

It had been a while since I did a galaxy/night sky background so was looking forward to getting very inky!

I started with a panel of white card and my choice of coloured inks to use as my constellations. I chose pink, yellow, and blue and inked them randomly across my card.  I then went in with the black.  Now this is quite intimidating to most of us, I think the trick is to go slowly and steadily, but be brave and bold.  Once I had laid all the black I wanted down, I gave my piece a good sprinkling of water droplets which I then soaked up with paper towel.  I also added a good flicker of white paint and a spritz of shine mist.  Once I was happy with how it looked, I took Wplus9's Starry Background, and cut it twice from my panel.  

I took a piece of vellum and cut Lawn Fawn's Forest Border from it, I really wanted to emulate one of those stunning photos you see of the Northern Lights, really magical and beautiful, and thought the Forest Border really helped set the scene.  I then stamped out my sentiment in the spare space using these beautiful words from Mama Elephnat's Shooting Star set, and white heat embossed.  I find myself turning to this set a lot for sentiments as they are all heaped with meaning and very touching.

I adhered my vellum in place by creating a wrap and hiding my double sided tape around the back of the panel, then mounted my whole piece onto some silver sparkly card to really make my stars 'pop'.

I finished by cutting a few stars from the same silver sparkle card using Mama Elephant's Confetti and adding them as embellishments.

I really enjoyed making this card, so really hope you like how it came out.

As always, everyhting I used is linked below so be sure to check it out.

See you next week.

Jillx

For Lee, 'This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you'.

Soft and simple, sweet little Pix in the spotlight.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I've gone soft and simple with a bit of design spotlighting...

...putting Mama Elephant's Pix's Favourite's in the spotlight!

Such a gorgeous set, it just seems to go hand in hand with a delicate design.

I started with a piece of watercolour card cut down to a panel using Lawn Fawn's Stitched rectangles.  I die-cut an off-centre circle, so that it edged off my card; to that circle, I cut Lawn Fawn's Forest Border and the cloud from Mama Elephant's Landscape Trio.  I then watercolour washed my background and my elements using Distress Inks.  I really wanted my background to be the softest of soft washes, so really watered down my inks and blotted the back as soon as I'd put the colour down to the point it's barely visible in the pictures, but looks really lovely and subtle in real life.

Once everything was dry, I added a sun die-cut from Lawn Fawn's Spring Showers and in-lad all my pieces back in place.  At this point I thought my spotlight circle was getting lost in the pale expanse of the background, and it wasn't really 'popping' like I wanted it to, so I added a border of grey patterned paper behind to help it stand out.

I then stamped out my main focal image, this delightful little bunny (Pix, I assume?), and little tree stump from Pix's Favourite's.  You get a load of different designs in this set, each one as adorable as the next, but with her little butterfly, I felt this one would work perfect with my design.  I coloured her using Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens, again, keeping it as light and gentle as I possibly could by adding a lot of water to my ink, and blotting often.  I then fussy-cut my image and mounted on top of my spotlight using foam tape.

I then stamped out my sentiment from the same Pix's Favourite set onto vellum in black ink, heat embossed, and adhered with just the teeniest bit of wet glue along the top, masked by the crosses from the stitched rectangle borders.

I added a few little bits of ribbon to embellish, cut into flags and banners and tucked into a little label, and finished off with a couple of black enamel hearts to tie the whole design together.

I really hope you like it, and as always, everything I used is linked blow.

see you next week.

Jillx