Hey crafty pals! Happy Saturday! Welcome back to this edition of Weekender with Wanda on the Simon Says Stamp blog! SO happy to have you here again with me for a bit of your weekend. Great to see you!  Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day! I’m kind of sad to put away all the fun Valentine stamps and supplies. I really like making projects with hearts and cute puns. But, the good news is…we have Spring crafting to look forward to. Flowers, critters, leaves and all the pretty colors that come with Spring. Next week we are launching our newest release called “Reason to Smile” and it is full of Spring Inspiration.

Today I am doing a spotlight feature on  another one of my favorite stamp companies – Mama Elephant! Don’t you adore their sweet stamps and awesome dies? Seriously so much cuteness. I needed to make a baby card for a friend who is having a little girl soon. For baby cards I like to use animals and soft colors. The Charmed stamp set fit the bill perfectly. The set has a sweet little fox and a pretty banner that work together so nicely. I used my Distress Inks to watercolor the images onto watercolor paper. I love that bit of texture too – just seems better.

These beautiful images all have matching dies, which makes it super easy to put together a scene as I did here. I stamped all the images in Archival Ink (for watercoloring) and die  cut them out before coloring. I like to die cut my images before I color them in case I mess up the die cutting part (learned the hard way!). My background layers were made using the awesome Femme Frames Dies. This die set cuts perfect layers for an A2 card base. My card base is Simon Says Stamp Fog Cardstock – to match my little grey fox.

I speckled the background layer with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink blended with water and dripped on with a paint brush. For my images I did all the watercoloring with Distress Inks! Have you tried this before? It’s a great watercolor technique in case you don’t have a set of watercolor paints. It’s also an easy way to travel with watercolors. You can pack up your mini distress inks and be on the go in a jiffy – with 60 colors!

I used Worn Lipstick Distress Ink to color my banner to match my pink cardstock. Then I used  a few shades of green and gave her a pretty yellow crown! All of my color choices are in the supply links at the bottom of my post. Isn’t that the sweetest sentiment?

When I watercolor with my Distress Inks, I use a clear stamping block as my paint palette! Simply smush some ink colors onto a block and then use a paintbrush to pick up the color with water. You can make the color as bright or diluted as you want by adding water. I used a very small paint brush for this project since the images are very detailed.

Since this is a card for a baby girl, I thought it would be nice to add pretty pearl accents and tiny hearts. As you guys know by now, I like to add some sparkly bits to my cards at the end… Sequins, pearls, rhinestones or enamel dots. To me it’s like getting dressed and putting on your jewelry! All the images are popped up with foam squares to give the card some dimension.

I can’t wait to give this card to my friend! I die cut and colored a second little fox to hang on the gift bag as a tag. EEP. I hope I have inspired you to try a new technique… or to try it again! Thank you, as always, for coming by to check out Weekender with Wanda! I love sharing with you. Have a great weekend! Happy Crafting!

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