Fun with circles...

I am so honoured to be a guest designer again this week for A La Card Monkey.  I had a lot of fun with this week's sketch and I'm still coming up with ideas in my head for things I can do with it.  Here is the sketch:

A La Card Monkey Challenge #60 Sketch

So many possibilities!  I came up with 2 cards last night and will likely do more this week. Here's the first one:



Monkey Challenge #60

   I've been wanting to try a neat embossing/water colouring technique for a while now so I decided to take this opportunity to do it with the round stamp from the "Just Believe" set.  First, I stamped the image with my VersaMark and then heat-embossed it using white embossing powder.  Then, using my Blender Pens, I "water coloured" the flowers and leaves with Melon Mambo, Tangerine Tango, Blushing Bride and Wild Wasabi inks.  There a couple of ways to do this; while your stamp pad is closed gently squeeze it and this will allow some ink to "bleed" onto the cover, then dip your Blender Pen in it and colour away; OR you can colour with your Stampin' Write markers onto a plate or acrylic block and then pick up the colour from there.  Both ways work equally well but I prefer to colour on a plate rather than have all those stamp pads out at once.  Here's more of a close up look:

Monkey Challenge 60 embossing detail

I then punched out the circles using a 1 1/4" circle punch and mounted them onto Wild Wasabi and Melon Mambo "blossoms" that I punched using the third setting on my "Blossom Bouquet" triple layer punch using Stampin' Dimensionals.

The really tricky part of this card was the strips of Melon Mambo and Wild Wasabi card stock that I punched using the Scallop Trim punch.  Taking a strip of card stock that's a little less than 1/2" inch thick I punched out on both side being careful to line up the scalloped edges.  It didn't work perfectly but it still has a nice effect.  If I had the Pearl stick ons I would have added them to these strips as well as to the centre of the flowers on the circles.

I had to use my "Beyond the Garden" DSP again!  I LOVE this paper!  I really like the versatility of colours that it provides.  For this particular pattern I used Blushing Bride card stock as a base.  The sentiment is stamped in Melon Mambo ink and mounted onto the same colour card stock that has been punch using the Modern Label punch.