Color Me Happy!

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Hello and Happy Monday!  I'm here today with a card that is, quite frankly, a bit of a stretch for me -- just something completely different than my usual -- and that, my friends, is the fun of it!  :)

I was inspired by two challenges this week -- the sketch over at RetroSketches and the challenge to use acetate (or vellum) on a card at CAS-ual Fridays.  I love the card by N@ Ali that was the inspiration for the sketch at RetroSketches and was drawn to not only the way she layered her shapes and embellishments, but also the COLORS (!) she incorporated.

I knew I wanted to be as bold with my color choices as she had been with hers -- and what better way than with alcohol inks??  Enter the acetate.  Perfect.  :)

Here's my take on both challenges:

I love the chunks of color and the Maya Road wood veneer butterflies (I colored them with alcohol inks and then coated with Diamond Stickles for shimmer!) are the perfect accents!  Super fun and very different, no??  Hope you like it!  :)

Thanks for stopping by -- here's hoping your week "promises" to be a colorful one!  :)

(can't help the cheesy -- rainbows are promises, after all!  :)

A Tiny Taste of Alcohol (ink)

Pin It Ok, so like most paper-crafters, I am easily excited about new (to me) products and techniques and generally eager to "try my hand" at these at my very first opportunity.  I have admired (from afar) alcohol inks and all the ways they can be used, but have always considered them to be not really "my style..."

That is, until one of my blog-heroes, Virginia Lu, started posting cards like this and this and this on her blog.  (Pretty darn spectacular, no?  :)

So then, you guessed it, I just had to give them a try!  My first attempts were not so great, to say the least -- definitely not blog-worthy.  I learned that I needed to learn when to stop; I had a serious tendency to over-blend, creating murky pools of ink that dried into crusty pools of murky inks!

So, after quite a bit of practice, I decided to use my blossoming skill-set (ha!) to create a card for this week's challenge over at The Play Date Cafe.  I used the alcohol inks on vellum to create the layers of the flower and then heat embossed in pewter.  Here's my take:

The inspiration color story at TPDC

Anyway, I'm continuing to play with these inks (and have already extended my collection of colors!), so there will be more to come!  Have you tried them yet?  Would love to see what you've done with them!  Thanks for stopping by!  :)

Supplies:

• Stamps:  Hero Arts "Layered Flowers"
• Paper:  Neenah "Solar White" Cardstock, Vellum
• Sentiment:  SRM Sticker
• Inks:  Ranger Alcohol Inks - Purple Twilight, Sunshine, Gold Metallic Mixative and Copic Markers
• Pewter embossing powder, ribbon, adhesives