Creation Station July Blog Hop--In Color Combos

Welcome to the July Creation Station Blog Hop!  I'm happy you are visiting today!  We are an international group of Stampin' Up! independent demonstrators who create a themed blog hop for you each first Sunday of the month.  This month's theme is "In Color Combos".  We are highlighting our five new 2020-2022 In Colors:  Bumblebee, Cinnamon Cider, Just Jade, Magenta Madness and Misty Moonlight.

I love the new In Colors plus I love the new packaging options in our 2020-2021 Annual Catalog.  One of those options is the 3-1/8" x 3-1/8" Acetate Card Boxes (#150428) which hold up to five 3" x 3" note cards and envelopes.  Five new In Colors and 5 note cards to a box.  Perfect for a little monochromatic In Color fun!

I wanted to do something a bit different for my monochromatic theme, so I chose to create watercolor emboss resist designs.  I used images from the Four Season Floral (#152801, in the Beginner's Brochure) and Celebrate Sunflowers (#152517) stamp sets  and combined them with texture/background images from Comfort & Hope (#152509), Very Versailles (#149275) and Forever Fern (#152559) stamp sets.  Each image was stamped in VersaMark onto watercolor paper and heat embossed with White Stampin' Emboss Powder before the watercolor wash was applied in one of the In Colors.   I had a whole lot of fun with these and have the ink-stained fingernails to prove it!

The sentiment labels were die cut using the two smallest dies in the Stitched Nested Labels die set (#149638).  Whisper White baker's twine was used on each note card. 

The box was decorated with a 3" x 3" piece of Just Jade card stock, a Daisy/Bumblebee watercolor resist piece, and a 2020-2022 In Color Enamel dot (#152480).  It was tied closed with the Just Jade gingham ribbon from the Flowers for Every Season ribbon combo pack (#153620).  The ribbon was placed so that it can be untied to open the box without disturbing the decoration. (And, yes, all five note cards & envelopes fit neatly inside!)

Now it's time to see what wonderful projects Kerstin Kreuger has for us today:   

To Kerstin's Blog . . .    

Hope you enjoy all of the In Color inspiration today!

--Sara Nell

Watercolor Resist--#tgifc264

It's a technique challenge this week at TGIF Challenges:  watercolor. I decided early on that I wanted to do a watercolor resist technique card for this challenge.  I had an idea of the direction I wanted to go but, of course, that went out the window as I started playing around with different stamps and colors.  I had a few fails, but then I turned one fail into a cool background piece with a double resist technique:

I started with a piece of Fluid 100 Watercolor paper (#149612).  Next I randomly stamped the diamond pattern image from Gallery Grunge (#146538) in VersaMark and heat embossed it with White Stampin' Emboss Powder.  Then I did a watercolor wash in Balmy Blue ink across the entire piece.  It was kind of boring at this point, so I set it aside and tried a few other things and colors.  None of them turned out, so I came back to this piece.  I stamped the dotted image randomly over the piece in Versamark and then embossed it with Clear Stampin' Emboss Powder.  Then I did another watercolor wash over the top with Highland Heather.  Definitely not boring!

Finally, I had to decide on a focal point for the card.  I chose this sentiment from Colorful Seasons stamp set (#143726).  It's one of my favorites and I thought the font was perfect with this offbeat background.  I stamped it in Highland Heather on Whisper White card stock, die cut it with a Stitched Shapes (#145372) circle, and layered it over the openwork circle die cut using Balmy Blue card stock and a die from the Painted Labels dies. (#151605).

A card base of Whisper White Thick card stock, a layer of Balmy Blue card stock, a double bow of Whisper White crinkled seam binding (#151326), and three Basic Pearls (#144219) complete the card.

Both the Gallery Grunge and Colorful Seasons stamp sets are retiring at the end of this month.  So, click on the link to my store now if you want to purchase one or both before they are gone forever.

You can do so many different things with watercolor, so be sure and check out the projects this week at the TGIF Challenges blog here. You will be inspired!

Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!  Things are opening up again.

--Sara Nell