Hello there! Yes, it’s the weekend again! Last week went by so fast! Must be all that Christmas running around and such! Welcome back to another edition of Weekender with Wanda here on the Simon Says Stamp blog. I’m always so very happy to see you here each weekend! Thanks for all the nice comments.  I read them all – and enjoy your suggestions and support! Hope your holiday season is going well.

Today, in order to take a tiny break from holiday madness, I made a birthday card to share with you! I really wanted to use some more of the awesome products from the Simon Says Stamp DieCember release. I especially had my eye on the beautiful Single Roses Dies. I used those pretty roses dies in combination with the Painted Happy Birthday Die and then popped it all with a lot of bright vivid color. You can never have too many birthday cards on hand, right? I love to watercolor with my Distress Inks and that is the technique I used for today’s card.

I really love to use super bright colors with deep rich black accents. For this card, I made the flowers Pink and Yellow and bright Green. Then I die cut my sentiment out of crisp black cardstock. You can see that I added some white accents to the die cut words using a white gel pen. That’s the first time I’ve done this, and I like how that came out! My Single Roses Dies are cut out of bright white cardstock and then layered over my colored panels.

I used the awesome Tim Holtz Ranger Watercolor Paper for this project, and my Mini Distress Inks. To use the ink colors,  I simply rubbed some ink (smushed it!) onto my craft sheet. Next I added some water to my inks using a paint brush (You can also use a spritzer bottle). Then, I used a water brush to apply the color to my paper. For the leaves I used two different shades of green – Twisted Citron and Peeled Paint.

For my flowers, I used Mustard Seed and Picked Raspberry inks and used the same technique outlined above. After my watercolor paper was dry (I used my heat tool) I took a pencil and lightly traced around my roses die cuts. Then I cut the shapes out by hand, cutting the shapes slightly larger than my outline. After erasing my pencil lines I ended up with this:

I thought the background paper needed a bit of visual interest so I used some Black Soot Distress Ink to make splatters. To do this I put some ink onto my craft sheet and mixed it with water. Then I used the new Tim Holtz Splatter Brush to put the black ink splatters down. I absolutely love how this new brush works! I adhered my die cuts using foam tape for the flowers and a glue pen for the words. Lastly I added a few glittery enamel dots in matching shades. A black card base completes the look.

You could really have fun with this one – using all different colors for your flower backgrounds, and using different word dies. I might have to try making a Christmas one – if I don’t run out of time! Be sure to pop over and check out all the inspiration in the DieCember Idea Gallery! Also, please add your own DieCember creation! We love to see what you make with Simon Says Stamp products. AND…don’t forget that Copic Markers are on sale 25% off – until the 15th!

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Blog Candy Alert!! Follow our blog via email and comment on this post for a chance to win a special blog candy! Remember to tag your Christmas projects with #simonsaysstamp on social media so we can see what you are creating this holiday season! See you next weekend!