Welcome everyone!!! Its Shari here trying out some Gouache paints for a colorful background. I’ve never tried them before so I picked up the Paper Fashion Set 2 from American Crafts. This background was a practice sheet that I ended up liking, so into my journal it went. 

You may be asking yourself, what are Gouache paints? They are opaque watercolors that have a few fantastic qualities about them. You can water them down like watercolors or use them straight from the tube. You can layer colors on top of each other, even lights over darks!! You can paint over pencil lines without the need to erase. They dry flat with a matte finish. Oh.. and they remain water reactive even once they’ve dried! 

I started off trying a watered down wash then continued building color on top. I mixed my colors as I went just to see how they worked. Just playing with them to create a colorful background gave me an idea of how different they are from watercolors.

I was also wondering how they differ from acrylic paints. One thing that stood out was how they dry, I didn’t have any brush strokes, they dry flat. Clean-up is much easier and you can use all your watercolor brushes with them.  And finally, you can easily journal over them since they don’t leave a coated finish. 

Once I had my background glued in place in my journal, I added splats of Paper Fashion Pearl Liquid Metal for a bit of shine. From there I went about decorating the page with die cuts and gems. 

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Hi friends! We sure have enjoyed spotlighting the fab brand that is Lawn Fawn all month long and hope you’ve enjoyed it too! We’re capping off the month with a special and rare brand-wide sale! Take 15% off all in-stock Lawn Fawn products with code FWN452 at checkout!

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Welcome to another edition of Throwback Thursday—a trip back in time! For each throwback, we’ll be spotlighting fantastic cards and projects using products from previous releases. The new stuff is always SO fun, but think about all of those great products you’ve collected and set aside. They are STILL AWESOME! And we want to inspire you with fantastic inspiration from our creative archives.

Recently we debuted our fabulous Rest & Refresh collection, but let’s take a look back at a collection that made its appearance last year.  You might remember some pretty spectacular products from our Good Vibes collection. Let’s take a look at some inspiring cards created with goodies from this inspiring release from 2018!

First up is this adorable project from Gayatri Murali:

It doesn’t get much cuter than the Summer Cuddly Critters stamp set and dies that were originally released in our Good Vibes collection! I don’t know about you, but I’d love to splash around in this pool with this sweet guy! You can see Gayatri’s original post HERE.

Gayatri’s supplies

Next, let’s throw it back to this beautiful design from Debby Hughes:

This gorgeous design is such a showstopper! While the Strangeness stamp set features a gorgeous floral spray, Debby chose to watercolor the pretty bird instead. Debby also used white heat embossing in four different areas on this ethereal card including the Center Cut Geometric background stamp. You can find Debby’s original blog post with more details HERE.

Debby’s supplies

And let’s not forget this sweet design from Laura Bassen:

Cheery multicolored bikes take a ride across this adorable design by Laura. She features the Classic Bicycle and Big Friend dies (both part of the Good Vibes collection). You can find Laura’s original blog post HERE. In addition, Laura shared how she created this card in a video on our YouTube channel that you can see HERE.

Laura’s supplies

And finally this pretty card from Barb Engler:

The gorgeous Hibiscus Frame die from the Good Vibes collection is a knockout, and I love what Barb did with it! She used the positive portions of the die cut and colored them with Zigs and Copics. What a lovely result! The sentiment from the Vacation Time stamp set is the perfect finishing touch. You can check out Barb’s original blog post HERE.

Barb’s supplies

Did you know that we have inspiration galleries on our website showcasing project ideas for all of our releases and card kits? It’s a veritable treasure-trove of terrific ideas just waiting to inspire you, and you are invited to share your projects, too! You can find all of the Simon release galleries HERE and galleries for our monthly card kits can be found HERE. Scroll through today, and maybe you’ll find one of YOUR projects linked there!

Thanks for throwing it back with us and checking out these cool projects from four talented ladies!